Climate Change National Forum (CCNF) is a nonprofit publishing platform and national forum, founded and led by climate scientists, to educate the American public on the science of climate change and its policy implications. Our website, ClimateChangeNationalForum.org, has been featuring an open dialogue by a growing community of scientists since its debut on January 2, 2014, and we will continue to focus on the science of climate change throughout Phase I of this ambitious journalism project. The Forum is open to any scientist that can meet the CCNF science columnist criteria, as determined by the columnist-elected board. (Note: There is purposefully no criterion that requires a scientist to state or even have a particular position on climate change.) CCNF is openly soliciting all fellows and scientist-members of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) (see press), American Geophysical Union (AGU) (see press), and American Institute of Physics (AIP) to join the CCNF Scientist Community and participate in this national dialogue.

I was contacted in January by John Nielsen-Gammon about joining CCNF, and I finally managed the time to submit my application to join a few weeks ago. I decided to join since I like Nielsen-Gammon and Kerry Emanuel (who also joined), and I know that I can have an intelligent and interesting dialogue with them.

The format of the comments is that there are two threads: one for the member participating scientists, primarily related to fact checking, and the other for public comments and discussion.

The posts consist of original (or reposted) essays by the participating scientists, but also some essays articles that are selected that are judged to be interesting or controversial topics for discussion.

“Concerns”

The publication of Garth Paltridge’s essay and publication of my first essay has caused some in the twitosphere to voice their concern. The funny thing about Paltridge’s essay is that in the fact checking section, the only fact that was challenged (by Andreas Schmittner) was this:

“no scientist close to the problem and in his right mind … would say there is only a very small possibility (i.e. less than 5%) that internal ocean behaviour could be a major cause of the warming over the past half-century.”

An older treasure has the “title”: “Dr. Garth Paltridge on JudithCurry.com: Reluctance of IPCC and others to reduce confidence levels in light of hiatus and misunderstood climate mechanisms shows a lack of scientific skepticism.” It could be a stupid WUWT post pretending that global warming has stopped because the surface temperatures have not grown as fast as before, fully ignoring that the climate system as a whole keeps on warming and that only more of the warming went into the ocean rather than the atmosphere during the last decade. What makes this CCNF post even worse is that Judith Curry is defending it. Thus we have a confident wrong article above the line and little bickering scientists below the line. Great Fact Checking. That is science communication.

If the “Fact checker” stays this way, I would suggest all scientists to stop participating in CCNF. Let it succumb to another WUWT or Climate Etc. There are a lot of such homepages already; one more won’t hurt. That is better as a homepage that has credibility due to the participation of scientists, but that is actually helping spread misinformation.

That may happen automatically. Michael Tobis of Planet 3.0 writes:I have been trying to convince scientists that this site presents a level playing field where the true balance of science can emerge, and I’ve been rebuffed with the idea that this site is another example of “false balance”, wherein the politically structured arguments will again take precedence. That argument is being bolstered by this article…

Scott Mandia writes below the hiatus article:“Michael, I know your heart is in the right place but posting this piece really damages the credibility of CCNF. There is no place for the “It’s not happening” argument. … You have just elevated Dr. Paltridge to the status of the other experts who write here. You also run the risk of deterring real experts from future posts because they do not wish to be associated with this National Enquirer-type nonsense. Keep the discussion where it belongs. … Michael Quirke Please do a search for “Familiarity Backfire Effect” and you will see why this post is not helpful.”

And Bart Verheggen writes:“Also, I’d be [in] favor of setting a higher bar for articles to be posted in that section. Most scientists are growing tired of the same old “global warming stopped” type memes and have no interest and no time to engage in a game of whack-a-mole. Plus there are excellent myth-busting websites out there already. If there’s an intelligent argument brought forward that shines a new light on something, now that’s different. Bring it on!”

And CCNF scientist Scott Denning writes:I agree with Bart that the first impression of the CCNF forum is visually dominated by sometimes-bizarre and inflammatory posts that are not even remotely credible, and that this detracts from the quality of the forum.

It’s just not feasible to “fact-check” all these articles. Most of them are not fact-oriented in the first place. Propagandist rhetoric dripping with contempt for science has worse problems than can be addressed by simply “fact checking.”It seems like Michael Quirke did notice the discontent among the scientists:Will post up less of the inflammatory and complete B.S. for a while. Don’t want it to become whack a mole or lose the scientists’ participation. That being said, it is important to show readers what “the mole” looks like.

But I have the feeling, he does not really understand why. “Less of the inflammatory and complete B.S. for a while” sounds more like pacifying of the flaring protests than like a long-term solution.

I have wondered whether I should add NoFollow tags to the links to CCNF. [UPDATE: Have added rel=”NoFollow” to all links to CCNF.]

Some might call these concerned individuals the ‘climate bigots’, but of course I would never say anything like that (h/t to Francis Urquhart, House of Cards).

JC reflections

I think what CCNF is trying to do is a good idea. I think the strategies and policies will evolve a bit over time, and I hope it succeeds. I think that Michael Quirke, who is organizing the CCNF, has good instincts. But the absolute intolerance of some academic scientists for anyone that disagrees with them is very disturbing.

When I joined CCNF, I didn’t even look at the list of participating scientists – I mainly joined up because Nielsen-Gammon and Emanuel. Upon looking at the list of contributing scientists, I am familiar with 9 of them. Apparently Quirke (as per his tweet) classifies the group as 14 ‘mainstream’ and 1 ‘outlier’ (the outlier is of course moi).

Sooooo . . . what are these people worried about? Shouldn’t 14:1 be sufficient to ‘neutralize’ me or put my heretical views into the ‘true’ perspective? Apparently not — Victor Venema thinks 30:1 is required, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Mann thinks that ‘1’ being allowed is too large, no matter what the ratio.

The point is that you can’t neutralize plausible alternative interpretations of the available evidence from diminishing the scientific ‘consensus.’ It only takes one such argument, and one person making it (but in fact there are numerous arguments and a substantial number of people making them).

Hopefully CCNF can stimulate some dialogue about genuine controversies in climate science, no matter how hard some people would like to pretend these don’t exist.

I see nothing of a straw man in that quote although I do see error in your use of the term. Clearly, from the above and in more places than I could hope to have patience to site, the point has been made by Curry and others that the issue at hand is the road from available data to conclusion. I take this to be the salient point of CCNF.

This is nothing resembling a straw man. It does however bear striking resemblance to name calling stripped of even a cursory appeal to reasonable argument.

Here’s mine. Judith refers to some unspecified scientists who have “absolute intolerance for anyone that disagrees with them.”

Key descriptive words are used:absolute

anyone

Now I don’t agree with those who think that debating someone like Judith somehow makes legitimizes invalid viewpoints. The merits of Judith’s viewpoints stand on their own.

This reminds me of those who say that having discussions with someone like Ahmadenijad somehow would legitimize his views.

I find the argument specious. Judith’s views have traction irrespective of whether they are debated at forums such as the one in discussion. The argument that debating Judith will somehow harm the efforts of “realist” scientists to influence public opinion is rooted in what I consider to be the “deficit model” of public opinion. In reality, IMO, the fundamental influences on public opinion are not even remotely driven by factors such as whether her views are debated on Internet websites.

However, none of that justifies, what IMO is her continued use of inaccurate, unscientific, unverified, unresearched, and hyperbolic rhetoric on her own part. She right criticizes tribalism, but then wrongly engages in tribalism herself. Such tactics undermine her goal of “building bridges,” IMO.

I don’t see “absolute intolerance” for anyone who disagrees. I see people who think that debating views like those of Judith is counteproductive, and therefore they don’t want her views to be a part of their discussions. I disagree with their intent as well as with their assessment of cause and effect – but what they’re advocating is not, as Judith describes, “absolute intolerance” of “anyone” who disagrees.

It is a shame that people sully the name of “skepticism” by accepting that kind of nonsense from her without calling her on it.

Have you read the actual blog? Both Mann and Mandia seem to be displaying considerable intolerance

No I haven’t read it. I gotta run, but I’ll do so later. Here’s my guess. They might display “considerable intolerance,” but it is not “absolute,” nor directed at “anyone who disagrees with them.”

I’m not saying that they are “absolutely” tolerant of all differing views from “anyone.” If I did, then I should be subjected to exactly the same criticism as that I’ve offered of Judith’s rhetoric.

The hand-wringing and drama-queening and victim-playing are all counterproductive, IMO, on both sides of the climate war battle lines. The way to mitigate the hyperbole and tribalism on the one side is not by trying to create an equal amount on the other. Seems to me like it’s just plain “two wrongs don’t make a right” common sense of the sort we learned as children.

Since you don’t understand, I’ll put it another way. Your post contains snark but no light.

You continue this, albeit with many more syllables in your response to me. There, you attempt to posit a form of moral equivalence argument which while it gets a lot of play in the media, isn’t actually a form of argumentation that presents the possibility of information being exchanged. Presumably you feel better having vented your spleen. Good for you. As regard to what I take to be your point: There’s no there there.

OK, I read it now. I see no reason to change my perspective. Yes, I think that there is what I would consider to be “considerable intolerance” for the view “It’s not happening” and for Judith’s commentary. Nothing new there, eh?

That is not the equivalent of “absolute intolerance for anyone that disagrees with them.” Maybe you could point out to me something that fits Judith’s description?

In the latest Climate Etc. poll, little joshie tied with stefanthedenier as the “most predictable clown” on the blog. Joshie won outright the category “most misogynistic putz”. Now watch him reply with about four thousand words about something totally unrelated to my comment.

Well joshie, I am not an anal retentive little misogynistic putz so I don’t worry much about every little comment that Judith makes. You will have to ask somebody with personality disorders similar to yours for help.

“That is not the equivalent of “absolute intolerance for anyone that disagrees with them.” Maybe you could point out to me something that fits Judith’s description?”

There are very few things that human beings engage in that can be termed “absolute.” So in the narrowest, most trivial, most idiotically nasty sense possible, you can be deemed “correct.” Is that your goal? Is that a contribution you can be proud of? Where’s your self respect, man?

“That is not the equivalent of “absolute intolerance for anyone that disagrees with them.” Maybe you could point out to me something that fits Judith’s description?”

There are very few things that human beings engage in that can be termed “absolute.” So in the narrowest, most trivial, silliest sense possible, you can be deemed “correct.” Is that your goal? Is that a contribution you can be proud of? Where’s your self respect, man?

Joshua – you clearly came here spoiling for an argument. I’m not sure what you were trying to prove by abusing the term straw man in that ridiculous way, however I hope you enjoyed the resulting pointless argument and now feel better. Don’t forget to thank Judith for putting up with you.

Yes, the claims that 97% agree gets repeated too much.
Yes, the claim that the Hockey stick is replicated gets repeated to much.
Yes, the claim that one can do attribution with models that dont represent internal variability, gets repeated to much.

There are plenty of stupid positions on both sides that get repeated to much.

Joshua says: Please do show “some” scientists who have “absolute intolerance” for “anyone” who disagrees with them. Go for it.
One example:
Michael Mann says: Michael E. Mann ‏@MichaelEMann 8h
I’m afraid there appear to be deeper problems w/site. serious* false balance issues :-(
Mann maintains that a site which allows a view (Curry’s) different from his own has serious false balance issues. Curry is a scientist of considerable repute, of at least equal scientific credibility to Mann. Yet Mann is intolerant of Curry’s views. In fact, intolerant of any contribution by Curry, and even calling into question the entire website. You may quibble over the use of the word “absolute”, but the intolerance is obvious and inappropriate in a scientific discussion amongst peers.
Regards “absolute”, I think it is a fair observation as Mann’s terse input is to be expected from Mann given his history of silencing opposing scientific views. To put the argument back at you Joshua, can you show any instance where Mann has intelligently engaged the apologist of a climate view divergent from his own?

Climate Etc. has more hits, by far now than when Joshua’s first comment appeared. It appears Joshua’s contribution does no harm, is a greater draw than anything you’ve done, and your absence is no loss.

Dr. Curry is department chair of an institution that spends more on pompoms for its cheerleaders (yes, I know that’s an exaggeration, it is meant merely to give a sense of the scale of the inequality) than the IPCC spent on AR5 WG3.

UAH is the province of Dr. Roy Spencer and Dr. John Christy, who have exclusive access to impressive satellite feeds and substantial funding.

Dr. William Gray’s department enjoyed four decades of support for hurricane research.

Oh, and the man most in charge of most government spending on climate science? That’d be Jim Inhofe.

So it appears your argument has things a bit backwards.

Not that the 30:1 ‘balance’ point is anything but specious. It would require balance in appeal to audience, in ability to nudge the discourse into the framework and viewpoint that favors some conclusions over others, even eliminates the possibility of discussing conclusions contrary to the desired outcome. And in that sense, Dr. Curry has already won.

Which of the other fourteen have a Mosher or McIntyre in their corner coaching them on blackhattery, as Dr. Curry has?

Which of the other eighteen yet-to-comes have testified before Congress about how they have learned how to manipulate the public, as Dr. Curry has?

Anyone who thinks numbers can sway audiences by ‘balance’ of speakers knows next to nothing of public relations.

When scientists begin to take the art of communication seriously, to pay attention to how they say what they say as assiduously as they pay attention to ensuring what they say is accurate or very nearly true (and many could improve their efforts that way, too), then the mainstream will always be subject to even a single bit of crackpottery well expressed obscuring the discourse and abusing public gullibility.

They can start by sending Michael Mann to a media relations course. Or obedience school.

@Mike Flynn – not to answer for Steven Mosher, but I often start my sentences that way, but it is due to a nerve problem in my hands. The “opposite” of Carpal tunnel – Pinched nerves in the Elbows – cause a weakness in the pinkie and ring fingers. So when I “think” I am pressing the shift key, it often is not depressed enough.

Bart R: Your response to Mosher did not address your inaccurate claim that UAH has “exclusive access” to satellite data. Clearly, RSS (at a minimum) has the same data. While it is indeed frustrating that the UAH code is not public, that is not a defense of what you wrote.

You also wrote that “the man most in charge of most government spending on climate science? That’d be Jim Inhofe.” This is most surprising, for several reasons. Sen. Inhofe is a member of Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. The chairperson of that committee is Sen. Boxer. Inhofe is not even the ranking minority member (Sen. Vitter). So even within that committee, Sen. Inhofe is hardly the “man most in charge.” Further, most government spending on climate science is not controlled by the Senate Committee, although undoubtedly they have some influence; spending is controlled by various Executive branch agencies, with the Dept. of Energy having the largest dollar value. According to this report, DoE spent $4.4B of the $9.1B FY2013 climate change expenditures. [To be fair, the majority of this budget is not climate science — a lot is alternative energy development. NASA, at $1.4B annually for its Global Change Research Program may be the leader in climate science expenditure. But in neither case is this government spending controlled by Sen. Inhofe, or even the Senate Committee.]

Consider these figures when thinking of the reliance of climate science on government funding.

Yes, it’s well known that besides NASA, both the private company that produces RSS (also ‘exclusive’, in that they don’t much release their code, either), and from time to time single efforts access the data.

Perhaps your suggestion, “frustrating” is better than “exclusive”, but I’ve been trying to be more tactful of late, ouf of consideration for the feelings of others. By all means, substitute any word you want that means whatever you want, if it makes you feel better.

As for Jim Inhofe’s relative powerlessness to influence the budget of Science, I cannot but admit that I am truly astounded by the complexity and cherry-picking required to spin what I said into something doubtful.

Thank you for showing how accurate, or nearly true, my claim is, on its face.

“But the absolute intolerance of some academic scientists for anyone that disagrees with them is very disturbing.”

Judith,
Even after all this time, you’re still an idealist. It’s an admirable quality, but it’s guaranteed to cause pain and disappointment. The lack of tolerance for divergent ideas and opinions, was absolutely predictable…which I concede makes it no less disturbing.

Dr. Cury just recently did a post “In Defense of Free Speech.” She knows that climate science has been politicized, to the point of her calling for the death of the IPCC. She received the full treatment herself at RealClimate before starting this blog

Yet she is shocked, shocked that the Manns and Tobises are against a free and open discussion.

I bet 5 to 1 she is politely requested to withdraw from the site within the next six months. Either that, or she will find her submissions refused posting until she withdraws “voluntarily.”

I don’t really care if there are as many warming sites as they feel the need but shouldn’t we do a political inventory of the participants? We always here about the “consensus” isn’t it time to put all the names on this fantastic “97%” and IDENTIFY THEIR UNDERLYING POLITICAL WORLD VIEW?

A simple “D, I or R” in the U.S. A “L, T, U” etc in England and so forth.

The false equivalency Michael Mann benefits from is that his views aren’t scientific to begin with, they are political objectives of his radical green orientation. The same is true throughout the debate, the public deserves disclosure.

As for the limited left-of-center dissent, Dr. Curry etc. should support the idea as well. More disclosure is far more important then another climate opinion site.

I make no secret of the fact that I greatly admire this woman. I find her admirable in many ways; courageous, equable, tolerant, highly principled. You can always find less charitable ways to describe a person. Certainly in this case, I can’t see the point.

I agree 100%. I admire her sufficiently to believe she can accept criticism as well, without labeling it “uncharitable.” I respect her enough to think she does not need “charity” from me, as opposed to courtesy.

I believe she is naive in her unwillingness, which is admittedly fading as my comment made clear, to recognize the nature of those who are leading the CAGW movement, and many of their acolytes, at least among her scientist colleagues.

I find her journey away from passive acceptance of the consensus, to her increasing independence of thought, more than admirable. It is rare for those who I call default progressives. That does not mean that her journey is complete, nor that it is uncharitable to say so.

I think full understanding of the nature of one’s opponents is crucial to overcoming the CAGW movement, which is just one facet of the progressive movement.

CAGW is all about politics. And to use a common truism – politics ain’t beanbag.. (Although “naive” is about as beanbaggish as you can get in political commentary.)

“I think full understanding of the nature of one’s opponents is crucial to overcoming the CAGW movement, which is just one facet of the progressive movement. ”

Gary, I think what you’re missing here is that Judith doesn’t see things in the same Manichean terms you do. She doesn’t think…I don’t believe…in terms of movements…or even politics. Maybe that *is* naïve, but I see her as a pure scientist and teacher who expects to find in her colleagues the same reverence, humility, and respect that she has for her chosen professions. Every time she doesn’t, it to a certain extent disappoints her all over again. I expect that these last five or so years have been painful for Judith, but she has the courage to follow the road she’s on wherever it takes her..

Anyway, that’s my reading. Idealism is a strength in my opinion. People respond to it, and find it persuasive.

There are probably several reasons why Judith is not the bomb thrower that some want her to be. One reason is that she is not some anonymous little blog character who can shoot his mouth off without concern for personal and professional relationships and repercussions. Walk in her shoes. She is also a lady, in case someone has forgotten. Ladies do things differently. They don’t pump themselves up and try to act like so-called alpha males. They are more circumspect. And it might be mortifying to some, but ladies are more polite and less confrontational than the bull of the human species. They work better with others. They get along and keep things together. I like ladies. Especially smart ladies with courage and exemplary ethics.

Don,
I used to be critical of Judith a few years ago for what struck me as her lack of fighting spirit. She was right, and I was wrong. For one thing, her view of things were still evolving, which right there is something one doesn’t see much. Most people pick a side either consistent with their politics or out of personal self-interest, and from that moment become intellectually frozen in time. Cognitively undead. In this case, climate zombies.

For another thing, she was wise enough to understand that she’d accrue much more credibility by remaining even-handed to the very extent possible, and apolitical. Were she more militant, it’s highly unlikely she’d be called on by the MSM to offer her opinion, which she often is these days. In her quiet, determined way, she by force of her gentle personality has become a figure to be reckoned with.

Definitely will be looked on as one of the few heroes in this fiasco in the years to come.

Our hostess may not realise it, and if she does realise it, she almost certainly does not want it, but, I suspect, that so far as we CAGW skeptics are concerned, she has “posse comitatus”. If Dr. Judith Curry were to “raise her Standard in the Highlands”, then, IMHO, the “skeptical clans would gather”.

Well, poker get’s it. Judith knows the score. If she raises a banner to rally the posse and starts throwing bombs, the consensus goons will find it that much easier to marginalize and demonize her. That’s the reality of politics that bomb throwing fundamentalists don’t get.

Have you read any of her posts on the IPCC? Did you ever read the statement of purpose on her “About” page for this site?

“Climate Etc. provides a forum for climate researchers, academics and technical experts from other fields, citizen scientists, and the interested public to engage in a discussion on topics related to climate science and the science-policy interface.”

Of course she thinks in terms of politics, she says so outright. When she first started blogging she was dismissive and highly critical of conservative skeptics. Until she realized that primary source of support, once she departed from the orthodoxy, was conservative/libertarian skeptics.

So she acknowledges the highly politicized nature of the debate (which was in large part the basis for her calling for getting rid of the IPCC), and has no difficulty seeing this politicization in the IPCC, consensus bloggers and “journalists” and even some of her fellow scientists.

And as far as “Manichean,” you as a former progressive have no room to talk. The whole CAGW debate is about decarboni9zation. A massive movement to centralize power over the energy economy in the state. There are those for it (progressives) and those against it (skeptics). Those are the two sides of the debate. As in any debate there are those who want to take a “middle road” (lukewarmers), but they are a small minority, have no political power, and never will.

I understand that former progressives/CAGW advocates are still squeamish about being too critical of their former tribesmen, and their former acceptance of everything they had believed. But the political debate over decarboniation is far from over. So such naivete is something society cannot afford.

The point of my comment was solely that it would be better for Dr. Curry to see the CAGW movement, AMONG HER COLLEAGUES, as clearly as she sees it among other progressives in politics and the media.

Gary, I am guessing that poker meant that Judith is not motivated by politics. See the difference? You are badly mistaken in your belief that the entire population of people who are concerned about the POSSIBILITY of anthro CO2 caused CAGW are motivated by progressive politics. The first thing you need to get right in politics and war is to know who are your enemies.

Progressive politicians didn’t have a meeting and decide to de-carbonize the world and then set out to find scientists accomplices, who would make up an excuse for their crusade. Progressives like to save the world every now and then, so they were happy to make use of the alarm raised by some climate scientists. Haven’t you read Alinsky, Gary?

Gary, most of the hundreds of million, if not billions, of people who are concerned about the POSSIBILITY of CAGW are not looney leftists engaged in some neo-Marxist plot to take over the world.

If you want to fight the de-carbonization movement effectively, you need to get a grip on yourself and deal with the reality that AGW is not fundamentally a hoaxed up political plot. Most of them really believe it, Gary. It is loosely based on credible science. What you need to focus on is the unsubstantiated positive feedback assumption, Gary. Prove that’s wrong and you win.

Gary, Don says it all nicely. Of course she thinks about politics, but it’s not her primary frame of reference, as it is with you. In practical terms this means that she’s not thinking about “overcoming the CAGW movement,” as I believe you put it. You see a progressive conspiracy, I’m guessing she just sees a bunch of people acting like jerks in pursuit of their own individual self interest.

You’re a very smart, at times eloquent guy, but you tend to be black and white in your thinking, and it makes you…imvho…less effective than you might be.

Just to add in the interest of clarity, I’m talking about the many scientists and academics who are as it turns out, greatly advantaged by hewing to the alarmist side of things. As to rank and file citizen warmists, the great majority are well intentioned…or believe they are…but woefully misguided and misinformed..

I read Alinsky 35 years ago when I was being recruited by a group of progressive “community organizers” to run their fund raising in the community. (Fund raising among corporations, aka blackmail, was above my pay grade.)

If pokerguy is saying Dr. Curry is not motivated by politics, that is interesting, and something with which I agree. Read my actual comment. I wrote that she is still naive to a degree when it comes to the politicization in her industry, not that she is herself political.

pokerguy,

“Of course she thinks about politics, but it’s not her primary frame of reference, as it is with you.”

That’s probably why I said nothing of the kind. My point is that she, and you, still are not aware of the extent of the politicization involved in the CAGW movement, which is just on aspect of the progressive movement.

You are unaware of it probably because before you and she left the consensus behind, you did not frequent media sites, and read books, describing the Alinskyite progressive movement. You both bought for years the caricature of opposing view points, including regarding the politics of the movement.

Look, decarbonization is not going to be implemented by James Hansen, Michael Mann, Peter Gleick, the IPCC or any other scientists. It is being done by hard left progressive politicians. But the Hansens and Manns are full on board because, while they are scientists, politically they are default conservatives. Like I assume you were, and Dr. Curry likely was.

The naivete, which you apparently share, is that the politicization among the “consensus” scientists is somehow not conscious. It is accidental. Yet every time someone tries an open forum, or a fair debate,. the “consensus” scientists refuse to participate, or try otherwise to silence opposition.

It’s funny that this issue is even debatable after climategate, “hide-the-decline,” Stephen Schneider, Gleik, et al.. But it I suppose it is really hard to overcome your preconceptions after years of belief.

“Gary, most of the hundreds of million, if not billions, of people who are concerned about the POSSIBILITY of CAGW are not looney leftists engaged in some neo-Marxist plot to take over the world.”

Nor have I ever said otherwise. When pokerguy was a progressive, he was not a looney leftist. He was an intelligent, reasonable guy who cared about other people. He was a progressive, I will wager, because that is almost all he was taught. It was what his teachers and professors believed, and taught in all sorts of supposedly non-political classes. It is all he saw in the news media he frequented. It was what almost all of his colleagues and friends believed.

At least that is the how the vast majority of the “millions and billions” who vote for “change we can believe in,” the “children” and “farness,” got that way.

Don M @ 1.08: “Gary, most of the hundreds of million, if not billions, of people who are concerned about the POSSIBILITY of CAGW are not looney leftists engaged in some neo-Marxist plot to take over the world.” I doubt if there are billions, most have more pressing concerns; and those who are concerned are so probably because of what they have been fed by media and politicians. Many posting on CE say that they investigated the issue because of their concern, and found flaws which led them to be sceptical. Not many people take that step of further investigation.

GaryM @ 12.39: my reading on politicisation of the issue is similar to yours. The global impact on policy of alleged CAGW is not driven so much by any potential risks but by those who see political opportunities in exploiting the issue to pursue their political agenda, and foster concern at the prospective risks, whether real, exaggerated or imaginary.

As for Judith, I respect her and appreciate what she does, and would not attempt to push her in any other direction any more than she would try to push me, other than she does through advancing understanding of the science and its uncertainties.

I have a recent post on the Pielke thread which summarises my overall position.

Gary, this thread is about nothing. We went through one iteration of a ridiculous parsing of Judith’s comment about “absolute” whatever, when little joshie jumped on it just to cause trouble. Judith finds academic intolerance disturbing. I don’t know why poker was moved to comment that Judith is still an idealist. I don’t find it particularly idealistic of her to find it disturbing that academics are being intolerant. And it certainly isn’t naive. Only idealists or the naive would find intolerance disturbing? I don’t get it. I am not idealistic, not naive and I find the intolerance Judith is talking about disturbing.

Anyway, from idealistic to naive it descended to this crap:

“Of course she thinks in terms of politics, she says so outright. When she first started blogging she was dismissive and highly critical of conservative skeptics. Until she realized that primary source of support, once she departed from the orthodoxy, was conservative/libertarian skeptics.”

That’s as unjustified and insulting as the crap that the warmista Judith haters throw at her. What were you thinking? You need to apologize.

I can’t understand why Judith allows this to go on in her house. Go try it at McIntyre, or Watts blogs. I am sure the hosts of realclimate would love for you to drop by, for a minute. Judith needs a borehole to contain you characters. A thread for character assassination, insults and irrelevant whining and complaining about Judith. Let joshie be the moderator.

The argument that “the climate system as a whole keeps on warming and that only more of the warming went into the ocean” is getting old. If you take OHC over the last 17 years, it amounts to 0.5W/m^2 in the face of 1.94W/m^2 of forcing. So, it seems, 74% of the presumed forcing is being rejected, and they are forcefully arguing that sensitivity is very low and feedback is very negative, just not infinitely negative.

So, are these “mainstreamers” in total denial, or are they unwittingly doing the bidding of the “Koch brothers”?

Thanks for the plug, even if it is a bit late, because the problem is solved by now. I was complaining about the format of the Fact Checker at CCNF. They were more positive about my input and have now changed the system. The scientists are now responding above the line and are not demoted to responding below the line in the comments. Comments which many people do not read.

Otherwise I am quite happy with the CCNF. It is a forum with some science that can lead people back to reality, people that would most likely never visit RealClimate and Co. For the same reason Like I like your blog, you cite from the scientific literature and I have some hope that this lets people see the difference in quality of argumentation between WUWT and the literature.

My comment about 30 to 1 was a response to Mann calling for balance. I was only pointing out that that would be difficult. The fraction of dissenters with blogs is way higher as the fraction of mainstream scientists with blogs. That creates an imbalance that CCNF cannot solve.

JC: It only takes one such argument, and one person making it That is theoretically true for the scientific literature. I am sure you understand that this is not true for blog-science. Isn’t that why so many dissenters are blogging?

In praxis it will likely take more than one Galileo or study. Also the refutation of classical mechanics by quantum mechanics and relativity did not change many thinks we already understood at the time. It allowed us to study new things and ask new questions. That was the revolution.

Climatology is a mature field and new finding will more likely change the complete picture only little. The most uncertainty is in the impacts, improving our understanding there will have to be done one impact at a time. And more likely, one aspect of an impact at a time.

1. Climate science is NOT a mature field. Stay tuned for more and more surprises . . .

2. The CCNF fact checker is rather pointless. Having scientists say they agree with something or disagree with something (which is all that was accomplished by the so-called fact checking on Jim White’s piece) adds nothing. Who really cares whether the the 15 self selected volunteer scientists agree or not?

3. A certain number of scientists agreeing isn’t all that useful in the public dialogue on climate change. The point is the argument and the narrative, which is how you link and interpret incomplete and ambiguous evidence. The fact that the public and the policy makers and media are interested in alternative interpretations is endlessly frustrating to those of you that are trying to push a manufactured consensus as gospel. This explains why the skeptical blogosphere has been so successful in influencing the public debate on climate change.

Climatology is a mature field and new finding will more likely change the complete picture only little.

What? Some day the Climate Theory and Model Output will match actual real data. That is a major change to the picture. Little changes will not help. Mature has more than one meaning. There are Old smart people and there Old fools. Smart people have Models with output that match real data.

Whether climatology is a mature field is an interesting topic. It would be interesting to know what climate scientists think of that. 97% think it’s mature?

When I read abstracts of climate papers there is one thing that strikes me as different compared to other fields in natural science: How often the word “could” appears in the main results. Is that maturity? I think a healthy exercise for climate researchers would be to look at their use of “could” in abstracts and ask if that word is necessary. If the paper stripped for the “coulds” becomes too lightweight, wouldn’t it strongly suggest that the paper is not mature for publication?

B.D. asks presumably with a straight face. “What do 19th century quotes have to do with the state of climate science in the 21st century?”

It never ceases to amaze me, how tone deaf you warmists are. Every one of you. It’s almost as staggering to me, as the statement under discussion. Not an insightful thinker, much less an original thinker, among you, at least that I’ve seen. How can that be? And what does it mean?

In social settings maturity and civility go hand in hand. I see very little of either in a lot of the participants. When the discourse is elevated a little, perhaps climate science and maturity could be used in the same sentence.

Mature field? A community of so-called scientists, who treat those among their colleagues who don’t swallow the dogma hook-line-and-sinker as pariahs. That’s real mature. Shows a lot of confidence in their maturity and wisdom. This guy is as funny as barty and jimmy dee.

Climatology consists of the averaging of a very small subset of the parameters that define weather over an arbitrary time period.

Please feel free to correct me if I am wrong.

It is thus a mature field, as there is little to be discovered about different ways of computing an average. There is probably still scope for manipulating original data, and similar irrelevancies.

You might care to name one breakthrough in climatology, one benefit to mankind of climatology, or even one great moment in climatology. Where is your climatological Newton, Einstein, or Kekulé?

There are no climatological facts to be checked, apart from ensuring that the climatologist in question knows arithmetic, and has performed the averaging calculation correctly. They don’t appear to need, or have, knowledge in any area of real science.

Luckily, it seems that the people with control over disbursement of taxpayers’ funds are slowly coming to their senses, and realising that climatology is slightly less useful to mankind than phrenology. At least we can smile at phrenology, and phrenology didn’t seem do a lot of harm to the general public.

Climatology, on the other hand, has diverted billions of dollars into activities which have produced almost no benefit to man nor beast to date. Unless you believe passionately that cows will benefit from farting less, that is.

The climatological edifice has a floor of highly burnished assumption, on a solid foundation of wishful thinking. The walls are hung with finely crafted nonsense – and wondrous to behold. There is no roof, as it was overlooked by the modellers. The individuals living therein have obviously had their brains addled by exposure to excessive amounts of back radiation – or were afflicted with infective delusional psychosis from the start. This is known to affect weak minded persons to a greater degree.

Climatology? Predictions based on astrology seem to possess as much skill, if the last twenty or thirty years is any guide.

So I ask what 19th century quotes that are obviously wrong has to do with 21st century climate science, and instead of thoughtful insightful answers I get insults.

“It never ceases to amaze me, how tone deaf you warmists are.”

I can plead guilty to tone deafness, you don’t to hear me sing, nor play guitar unless assisted by electronic tuning aids, but again what does my tone-deafness have to do with 21st century climate science?

I suppose you all are betting the farm that some undiscovered property of the CO2 molecule will turn up proving all of 20th century physics as applied to that molecule to be wrong.

Its all applied physics, a molecule that radiates in the infared and is present in the atmosphere will warm the surface, all other things being equal. But as some say all other things are not equal, but then those other things are irrelevant to the question of whether or not increasing CO2 warms the surface.

Waiting for negative feedbacks to magically appear? Have not seen any evidence of any yet, other than the big temperature to the fourth one.

And the models get temperature within 0.2% so that looks pretty good to me, anyone who says they are off by 150% doesn’t understand error measurement.

Where does your CO2 molecule heating the surface get the energy from, which enables its temperature to be increased to the point where it can warm anything at all?

If it receives energy from the Sun, then that energy is not available to be absorbed by the surface, having been absorbed by the CO2. If the CO2 molecule emits radiation in all directions, then only a portion of the energy absorbed by the molecule is available to the surface, rather than the full amount which would have been absorbed by the surface.

If it receives its energy from the surface, then the temperature of the surface would fall as a result of the reduction in energy emitted to be absorbed by the CO2. If the CO2 then returns less than one hundred percent of the energy emitted by the surface, then the surface temperature will not increase to its pre emission level.

If there is a Warmist miracle, and the CO2 molecule creates energy out of nothing, and emits it to the surface, then all is well.

If my facts are wrong, then please tell me why. I will of course change my mind if the laws of thermodynamics relating to the creation and destruction of energy can be shown not to apply in this case.

Otherwise, the idea of warming an object by surrounding it with CO2 is complete and utter nonsense. What do you think? Has anybody ever done it?

Sorry, that’s more than one question. An answer to my first question is enough, if that’s all you can cope with.

“JC: It only takes one such argument, and one person making it That is theoretically true for the scientific literature. I am sure you understand that this is not true for blog-science. Isn’t that why so many dissenters are blogging?”

This gets it exactly wrong. There are so many skeptical blogs because more than “one argument” has been kept out of “the scientific literature” because it offended the orthodoxy. One who actually read what was posted at skeptic blogs, rather than accepting the “consensus” on that as well, would know that.

The climate journals have been a one note symphony. There was NEVER a debate in the literature among “climate scientists” about CAGW. It was dogma, born to full maturity, in that Senate chamber in 1988.

I suspect that may change soon. Some Climate Scientist is going to include Polar Ice Cycles in Climate Models and the Models will start producing output that goes up and down with actual data and not be able to just go up out of bounds.

Yes. I do know how insulators work. Global warming is not just reducing the rate of cooling. It is warming. Two completely different things.

If you can show me an insulator that will warm my hot beverage back up to the temperature it was when I insulated it, I will personally grovel in abject mortification. Obviously, you can’t, and I won’t have to.

You asked the following question, which encapsulates slightly deranged Warmist thinking –

“Does the insulator have to be warm to begin with, or can it insulate even if it is not prewarmed?”

The answer to your questions are no, and yes. That is of course, if, for example, you are prepared to let the insulation cool your contents as the insulation absorbs energy emitted by the contents, until the insulation reaches the same temperature as the contents.

If one wants to insulate liquid nitrogen, one would prefer to use a non warm insulator. A cold insulator will work quite well. The best alternative is to use something like a properly constructed Thermos flask, which has minimal thermal mass, thereby having minimal heat loss or gain due to heat transfer from the contents. Warmists, in general, think of insulators in terms of warming, whereas insulators merely impede the transfer of energy to a greater or lesser degree, between substances of different temperature.

In addition, no insulator is perfect. Eventually, an insulated body will achieve temperature equilibrium with its insulation, which in turn achieves equilibrium with its surroundings. No trapping, accumulating, or other magical processes occur. Just plain old interaction between light and matter, as Feynman describes it.

The Earth has demonstrably cooled since its creation, if you accept it was molten at the time. It has therefore lost energy – no equilibrium at all, otherwise it wouldn’t have cooled. Slowly, relentlessly, remorselessly.

Mike Flynn, I am glad you know how insulators work. For a given amount of heating, if you add an insulator, your house gets warmer, correct? This is how it works, The earth would be a chilly -18 C without an insulating layer, and is +15 C with it, going on 20 C with more. Easy concept, no?

bob droege, the radiative properties of CO2 constitutes a small part of a big picture – and is just about the only bit that’s reasonably well-understood. I wish the warmists would stop using that particular straw man, notwithstanding certain other posters here.

I see you trotting out the usual irrelevant Warmist analogy. I am glad you acknowledge that the Earth has a rather large internal heat source, and I agree that insulating the Earth to the same extent as one would insulate a house would result in an increase in surface temperature.

Alas, to do so would prevent any sunlight at all from reaching the surface, and we would die rather quickly due to lack of food and bumping into things.

However, increasing the number of blankets wrapping a corpse raises its temperature not one iota. No amount of additional insulation added to Mawson’s Hut in Antarctica raises its interior temperature at all. Still well below zero most of the time, particularly in winter.

Mike Flynn: “Alas, to do so would prevent any sunlight at all from reaching the surface, and we would die rather quickly due to lack of food and bumping into things.”

The trick, then, would be to use a one-way insulating gas that is mostly transparent to the incoming solar energy (mostly shortwave) — and hence lets it in — while it is mostly opaque to the upwelling longwave radiation from the surface. Something like CO2 or water vapor would fit the bill, don’t you think?

Your idea is a good one. One would merely need to surround a boiler with say, CO2 or water vapour, and the one way transmission of suitable energy would heat the boiler without any other heat source.

If the maximum temperature rise is only 33C for 500 ppm, then either cascading boilers or increasing CO2 concentrations to 100% would swiftly enable temperatures of hundreds, thousands, or even millions of degrees to be achieved as the trapped heat would be unable to escape.

Alas and alack! Neither CO2 nor anything else possesses such wondrous properties. This is a great pity. One could just fill a house’s wall cavities with CO2, and the house would heat by any amount necessary to keep us all warm and toasty. CO2 flasks would replace vacuum flasks, and cold soup would be automatically heated to the required temperature by adjusting CO2 concentration.

You may have noticed the greenhouse gases appear to have been falling down on the job lately. Maybe repeated chanting of the Warmist Manntra will repeal the current laws of physics!

Merely repeating fantasy, no matter how devoutly believed, will not cause it to become fact.

“If the maximum temperature rise is only 33C for 500 ppm, then either cascading boilers or increasing CO2 concentrations to 100% would swiftly enable temperatures of hundreds, thousands, or even millions of degrees to be achieved as the trapped heat would be unable to escape.”

The surface temperature increase is 33°C for just 280ppm of CO2 (and the water vapor feedback) in the Earth atmosphere. But it also requires that the “insulator” be several kilometers thick, and exhibits a convective lapse rate. With no lapse rate, then there would be no insulation since the effective radiation level would radiate at the same temperature as the surface. The atmosphere would effectively become a perfect conductor.

And, yes, if you would add another atmosphere on top of the actual atmosphere (i.e. just double up the amount of all the gases, or just the greenhouse gases) then the insulation would increase and the surface temperature would increase further. You idea of “cascading the boilers” is realized on Venus where there also is a convective lapse rate, the greenhouse atmosphere is much thicker, and the greenhouse effect yields about 500°C of surface warming.

Mike Flynn: “Unfortunately, you still haven’t produced any one way insulation. That’s a problem.”

The incoming solar energy is mainly shortwave while the upwelling energy from the surface is entirely shortwave. CO2 scatters longwave radiation but is transparent to the incoming shortwave radiation. This is what makes it effectively ‘one-way’. It lets most of the solar energy reach the surface unimpeded but then radiatively insulates the warm surface from the cold outer space. Simple.

Pierre-Normand, for a variety of reasons, I think post modern climate science is over-estimating the significance of the AGW greenhouse effect.

The Venus “greenhouse effect” story is a good example. The high temperature of Venus has little to do with CO2 or the greenhouse effect. Venus, at the surface is 900 degrees F. because of surface pressure. It has an atmosphere approx.100x the mass of ours. Using the adiabatic lapse rate for the Venusian atmosphere, if you ascend to where the pressure on Venus matches Earth’s (altitude 50km) temperatures are only about 50 degrees warmer than earth temperatures, considering Venus is closer to the Sun, this indicates atmospheric GHG composition is less important than thickness.

If our air atmosphere were at 90 bar, we’d be red hot too.

Distance from the Sun dictates available power and atmospheric pressure dictates the concentration of molecules per unit volume. These are the primary factors that set the temperature.

“Distance from the Sun dictates available power and atmospheric pressure dictates the concentration of molecules per unit volume. These are the primary factors that set the temperature.”

That’s the most assinin thing to appear here in a while. The pressure at the poles on the earth is the same as at the equator. Seasonally each pole is closer to the sun than the equator. But the poles are always far colder. Your assertion is thus proven wrong. QED

Phil Brisley, if the atmosphere were transparent to longwave radiation then it would be impossible for the surface to be sustainably any warmer than it would be in the absence of an atmosphere. Pressure alone can’t make it sustainably any warmer. That’s because if it were warmer, then it would radiate more energy to space than it receives from the Sun, and it would cool down until the energy balance is restored. Since the atmosphere would be transparent to radiation, the temperature that allows the fluxes to and from the surface to balance would be exactly the same as the temperature with no atmosphere at all.

Before I leave you to your alternate reality, I will just refer you to temperatures on the Moon, when at the same distance from the Sun as the Earth.

I know it doesn’t matter how many facts contradict the frangible nonsense that Warmists believe, but magical greenhouse warming doesn’t exist, never has, and never will. If you believe the Earth is warming, then I wish you well. You are going to do precisely nothing about in any case, if it causes you the slightest personal inconvenience. I am equally sure that you are prepared to fight to the last drop of my blood, and spend to the last coin in my purse.

“Before I leave you to your alternate reality, I will just refer you to temperatures on the Moon, when at the same distance from the Sun as the Earth.”

What point do you wish to make regarding the Moons highly spatially variable temperature? When you account for the Moon’s albedo and surface emissivity, then integrating the emissive power (as a function of t^4) over its surface, you get exactly the same amount of energy received by the Sun. The lunar surface radiates away exactly as much energy as it receives. When you do the same calculation over the Earth surface you get about 97W/m^2 in excess power compared with the energy received from by the Sun (and not reflected away). Might it be that the Stefan-Boltzmann law doesn’t apply on our planet as it does in the rest of the universe? Or might there be another explanation? Might it be that all this excessive emitted power does’t make it to space?

Ok Springer, I stand corrected, there’s no need to be a potty mouth. And yes, I agree, the angle of the Sun’s rays (insolation) changes things. I was assuming a constant (think same time, same place).

I’ll rephrase and pose my comment as a hypothetical question.

If you were to increase the mass of the Earth’s atmosphere, and you measure the temperature at the same place and time, compared to Earth normal, would the temperature be the same or hotter? If I understand you correctly you’re saying the temperature would be the same.

You ask would increasing the mass of the atmosphere make the surface hotter?

That depends on the geothermal gradient. If there’s a hot core then yes increasing the mass of the atmosphere will alter the geothermal gradient causing the surface to be hotter. Venus’ surface is isothermal despite almost no surface winds and a day length of some 200 earth days. That’s because the surface is heated from below not from above. 90 bar of CO2 at the surface makes it harder for geothermal energy to escape thus the surface becomes hotter. It’s not rocket science.

Climate Science, writ large, is an axiomatic science rather than an observational science.

The Central Axiom of Climate Science, which can be paraphrased in many ways, is: “Atmospheric CO2 is the ‘knob’ that controls the Temperature of the Earth (TOE). Anthropogenic CO2 (ACO2) injected into the atmosphere as a byproduct of humans deriving most of their energy through the combustion of fossil fuels is causing the TOE to rise at an unprecedented rate, the consequences of which will prove catastrophic if we continue to produce ACO2. Disaster can ONY be avoided if governments worldwide control ACO2 through a combination of taxing and regulating any and all activities which either produce or consume energy. ”

As you will note by reading Dr. Curry’s post above, a variety of other Climate Science forums supporting ‘mainstream climate science’, and the ‘mainstream media’ commentary on Climate Change, ANY theory, data, or opinion that questions EITHER the problem OR its solution, no matter how mildly, is prima facie ‘counter-factual’, and should not be given the dignity of recognition, never mind a reasoned refutation, by ‘respectable’ Climate Scientists.

Data that does not support the Axiom is ‘adjusted'; individuals and organizations who question it are ‘Alinsky-ed’. See the characterization of Dr. Curry by ‘mainstream scientists’ in the original post above and by their supporters on this blog.

Hmm. Climate science is mature? When they just started talking (an exaggeration, obviously) about black carbon last year? When Pielke Sr. was getting slammed two years ago for things that are now being treated as common knowledge?

Here is where a history degree comes in handy. History can provide us with understanding. What happened before can (and often does) happen again. In this instance, people were sure about something and were proved wrong. The part about ignoring history increasing your chances of repeating past mistakes comes to mind.

“It could be a stupid WUWT post pretending that global warming has stopped because the surface temperatures have not grown as fast as before, fully ignoring that the climate system as a whole keeps on warming and that only more of the warming went into the ocean rather than the atmosphere during the last decade. ”

Why? The pause, hiatus, slow down or whatever is just an indication that natural variability or the presence of long term persistence (can you say LIA?) were never properly considered by the “mainstream”. Defending the “projections” is supposed to be the hard part. It is always easier to poke holes in a theory. The “mainstream” just needs to grow a pair.

“Michael Quirke Please do a search for “Familiarity Backfire Effect” and you will see why this post is not helpful.”

Anyone who refers you to a fashionably named syndrome to express his disagreement has stopped thinking. Pathologising the opinions of others is duncery in scholar’s dress. It is the resort of snobs, expressed in the language of fops.

Strange to see science morphing into an academy with those
closed society values anathema to open society conjecture
and refutation processes.Controls on Science like the media
controls attempted in Oz with the recent Finkelstein Report
described by Senator Brandis as ‘ an alarming new intolerance
not merely of those who do not subscribe to the preferences
and values of a conceited, self appointed cultural elite but an
intolerance of their right to express these views at all.’

From a sometime poster and general lurker here;
Dr Curry, you have just been given one hell of a peer vote that some other prominent scientists would likely kill for.
For the Skeptics you are worth, according to your peers in the alarmist camp, 30 of their own selves which says a great deal about their own admitted competency or lack of.
For the alarmists you are credited as being the equal of 30 of themselves and as above.
Now that is one hell of a reputation to have and maybe an even harder one to live up to.
But it is a worthy and deserved compliment along with a very reluctant recognition of your high level of expertise and of your personal integrity, honesty and openness, a collection of qualities that do not seem to be particularly common in much of the public face of climate alarmist science.

John N-G did send some of us email back when CCNF was formed. I read some, but I have not received notices about postings and I kind of forgot about it. Thanks for bringing this to our attention. I do like that I receive an email for each new thread on Climate Etc. It would be good if CCNF did that. Maybe they do and I just have not signed up for it. When Larry Bell writes an article for any publication, he sends out email notifications.

I would like a thread that explains why natural variability kept temperature well bounded for the most recent ten thousand years and now that natural variability suddenly lost the ability to warm earth like it did every other time and now we only warm because of man-made CO2. The warming in this warming cycle is much the same as the warming in all the other cycles. What stopped working. The actual temperature cycles warm then cool then warm then cool then warm then cool now warm. That appears just like it should be. Of course, Climate Models and Theory don’t have a cycle that must get warm then cold then warm then cold. Consensus Climate Theory and Models kinda follows the average and does not have the natural cycle and only goes up with CO2.

Nothing changed except that more CO2 was emitted into the atmosphere. This CO2 warmed the planet and postponed the natural temperature downturn that would have occurred as in every previous cycle – and we should be glad. Had it not done so climatologists would be trying to explain why we had slipped into another LIA. Were it not for increased carbon pollution we’d be freezing our tails off right now. Oh wait – 2005 and all that…..

I remember being told that minorities must work twice as hard for half the respect, and wondered what the respect of unfair people was worth that anyone would give so much to have it.

Venema’s point about not bothering to seek balance, as it is unavailable, is pragmatic and correct, and on goodwill reading does not come across to me as an intentional slam. You’d think I’d be familiar enough with that phenomenon to judge.

Even if they do dilute the message from Dr. Curry’s end of the spectrum down with eighteen more mainstream contributors, or if Dr. Curry’s recognized for being 50:50 on some mainstream thought, it’s still an effort that sounds well worth it.

But as I only follow one blog at a time to avoid the poisonous atmosphere, I’ll have to choose the one, or the other, now.

most of the scientific invitees who actively work on this subject declined.

While a balanced discussion of climate issues is really important, and I support this new attempt at the “Climate Change National Forum”, unless the community engages in an open discussion with the major players in each topic area, this effort will fail.

Roger, I think Climate Dialogue is SUPERB. They are having difficulty getting ‘consensus’ types to participate. I am aware of one new topic at Climate Dialogue that is in the works: a ‘consensus’ scientist contacted me about my experience with CD, I highly recommended it, and looks like he will participate.

The sociology of CD vs CCNF is interesting, in terms of scientific participation. I think John N-G would like for scientists with a range of perspectives to participate, preferably those who are Fellows of AMS, APS, AGU. But the group has already formed, with a !4:1 ratio. I’m certainly not going to spend a lot of time arguing with 14 others in the comments at CCNF. On the other hand, CD strives for 3 scientists with different perspectives, with at least one being skeptical and one being ‘consensus’. The dialogue at CD has been REALLY interesting.

THat said, I hope that both succeed and that CCNF and CD introduce more climate scientists to blogging.

Most people with views that agree with the consensus side do not like to discuss or debate. I understand that. They have Model Output that they believe in and Mother Earth has actual Real Data that does not agree. That is really hard to defend and support in a discussion or debate.

I talked with someone yesterday who does work with National Weather Service Meteorologists and he says they are not allowed to express their opinions, unless they agree with the consensus, and none of that group does agree with the consensus. I did talk to one of them, about a month ago, and he told me he is not allowed to express his opinion about Climate Science.

Dr. Judith Curry and Dr. John N-G are remarkable exceptions.
The believe CO2 may cause warming that will cause problems, but they discuss and debate with those of us who disagree and they acknowledge that there is more uncertainty than the Consensus Clique does admit to.

Climate Dialogue is a bad choice of name if they want to attract consensus types. It’s way too close to Climate Debate. Can’t have any of that. If they want to attract the consensus dogma goons, they have to call it something like the Climate Consensus Cabal and have funny little hats, a secret handshake and little plastic decoder rings. Or they could call it the CCC and just come to meetings dressed in bedsheets. Someone from outside the circle would have to help them cut the eye holes in the right places.

When Marcel Crok started Climate Dialogue, I had an exchange of views with him, as to why I thought it would not survive using the ideas he was suggesting. I suspect I was right. There has been nothing new on Climate Dialogue for months. It needs a nice funeral.

Before I would want to participate on such a forum, as this one being discussed, I would need to know a few things. What is the moderating procedure? would be number 1 on the list.

I dislike, intensely, that a blog would differentiate between “experts” and the hoi polloi. If a blog does not treat everyone equally, it will be doomed to failure.

I suspect, give this blog 6 months, and the participation rate will be so low, that it will be completely unimportant. I may not know too much about climate science, but I have been participating on these sorts of bullitin boards for over 20 years, and on this subject, I suspect I may know what I am talking about.

tony
I think at this point in the debate, it is the central question. And yet no takers on your question. Given so many are usually so eager to educate the rest of us on every aspect of climate science, I’m a little surprised no one is up to the task. The world wonders.

climatereason: I have asked the question here, but received no lucid answer, as to why and when heat went into the ocean rather than the atmosphere and the ocean. What are the mechanics of this?

You and I both, and I bet lots of others. Anyone paying attention to all the mechanisms of all the CO2 induced changes has got to wonder.

And even if it is true that “missing heat” is actually accumulating where most of it can’t be measured, all the seemingly precise forecasts about how much warming to expect by 2050 and 2100 are undermined. Why would anyone believe such forecasts when the forecasts for 2010 have turned out so inaccurate?

It is natural variation that causes the ocean surface to cool and warm on various time scales. ENSO is the most obvious example, but other things like PDO and AMO can cause 0.1 C variations in global temperature about the mean, which is why we are about 0.1 C below the expected trend at present, and possibly could reach 0.1 C above the trend just with the next El Nino. The sun may also be contributing. The key is that this is variation about the mean, and is self-cancelling, and the lesson is not to look at short time-scales for climate trends. This has been known for some time, which is why climate is defined from 30-year periods.

Jim D: It is natural variation that causes the ocean surface to cool and warm on various time scales. ENSO is the most obvious example, but other things like PDO and AMO can cause 0.1 C variations in global temperature about the mean, which is why we are about 0.1 C below the expected trend at present, and possibly could reach 0.1 C above the trend just with the next El Nino. The sun may also be contributing. The key is that this is variation about the mean, and is self-cancelling, and the lesson is not to look at short time-scales for climate trends. This has been known for some time, which is why climate is defined from 30-year periods.

Well said, except maybe for the “self-cancelling part” (where the appropriate time for the “self cancelling” always eludes discussion). Now, how does an increase in CO2 cause an increase in the heat content of the ocean without warming the troposphere?

Of course things will vary around the mean and we could call that noise. What you currently call a noise variation (the pause) below the mean (temperature projection), I can simply call “the actual mean”.

The mean is determined by the strength of the sun, the albedo of the earth, and the composition of the atmosphere, including GHGs, dust and aerosols. These are the factors in the energy budget. Ultimately the energy budget determines the mean surface temperature over a long enough time period. Any warming from internal variability like an El Nino is lost within a couple of years just because the excess is radiated. Longwave radiation is like the spring-force that restores equilibrium, and it does it quickly. Adding GHGs resets where the mean is.

From my perspective the biggest problem with CCNF is the neglect of anything resembling “paradigms” a la Kuhn. While the latter’s investigations of the sociology of science were highly preliminary, IMO he exposed a real distinction between activity “within the paradigm” and that from outside it. There are differences of opinion in both cases, but their nature, and the nature of how disputes are waged, are generally different.

I’m not saying I could come up with a clear way to approach this problem, but a greater awareness by participants, both scientists and journalists, of the existence of some sort of distinction in this area would certainly help. From my perspective anyway, I suppose the likes of Mann, Tobis, and Nuccitelli would disagree.

While CCNF is more open than, say, Real Climate, they still have limited participation by some skeptics, such as Hal Lewis and others who quit their societies in protest of the societies CAGWer bias. This should be open to anyone with a PhD in the physical sciences or Math. Period.

It would be interesting if Dr. Curry would start two permenant threads. One for anyone with a PhD in the physical sciences or Math with no comments from others. Another for anyone with a PhD in the social sciences, which I assume would include political science, or Math. Again, no comments there from others. This way there wouldn’t be the additional burden of screening comments on what amounts to two other blogs. Dr. Curry could just choose another offering as the next post. The argument would be in the posts, not the comments.

Unfortunately, anonymity can be important for some people, say those in government jobs in governments that would be hostile to even thoughtful, well reasoned questions. There are other folks who live in communities that are pretty liberal, with friends who would be intoloerant. Some people would say those aren’t true friends, so who cares, but other people do care. So you would lose some folks that might contribute usefully.

It is kind of like the secret ballot, there is a reason for the secret ballot, you can’t get intimidated or punished or ostracized for your vote, if people don’t know how you voted.

Global warming wasn’t scary like it was made out to be. In hindsight the climate change we feared was just a paltry, trifling and scanty amount of warming, although we were told to be very, very alarmed about it. In reality, the feeble global warming trend was trivial and mediocre: earlier periods of global warming periods were warmer–i.e., 3,000 years ago (during the time of the Minoans), 2,000 years ago (a time known as the Roman Optimum), and 1,000 years ago (the Medieval Warm period).

Current global warming was so slight it took its hibernating over the last nearly 20 years to notice and then actually admit the dreaded warming we feared so much had hesitated and then flattened. Very soon perhaps we will all begin to hear a small death-rattle as this minute amount of global warming turns off and then down into a falling tide that glides into decades of global cooling.

The old Consensus People dying off is not enough. They have the Media and Schools Brainwashing our grandchildren. That’s the fight we need to win. Consensus is an illness that must be stopped. You can not have science without skeptics.

(I tried to disscuss with Mr. Emanuel, but he did not reply to me).
So, Judith Curry, feel free to use any of my arguments in your disscussions within the CCNF. (Your stadium wave will be forgotten if you are not able to discredit IPCC’s view). All the best, Antonio.

Any blog that enforces the doom and gloom scenario, that paints future climate as exclusively punishing and unforgiving based on the evidence we’ve seen so far and which seeks to suppress, censor and shun alternative viewpoints is going to collapse under the weight of its own morbidity.

The first thing a “consensus” (for want of a better word) climate blog should do is breakdown the vaunted 97% figure and analyze what it means. I suspect that only half the 97% actually believe that catastrophic AGW is imminent and that a majority would say we really don’t know what the future holds. Someone capable needs to do an actual study that objectively and accurately categorizes the actual views of most climate scientists. Until that happens the 97% figure is comparable to the infamous election results in Liberia in 1927 where the incumbent Charles B. King beat his opponent by 230,000 votes in a country with only 15,000 registered voters.

After that, open, unfettered and mostly polite discussion needs to be strictly enforced so you don’t end up with a party line blog. A lot of blogs have perished or are sickly at the moment because they do not tolerate dissent. Judith’s blog is prospering because both sides of the debate are well-represented, although I think the skeptical side is a majority. “Consensus” believers who wouldn’t be caught dead commenting at WUWT find this site more accommodating. A majority “consensus” site that seeks to emulate this site and it’s tolerance policy would be a good thing. I’ve posted a few comments at Lewandowsky’s blog and was pleased to find I wasn’t censored. At the Guardian, on the other hand, I was regularly censored, which is unforgivable, since that is a mass publication.

Good, vigorous debate can be both fascinating and educational. Every blog should facilitate it.

All we need is another forum of “mainstream” choir members singing their songs as if their interpretation of the music is the “only way”. Calling themselves “mainstream” is nothing but academic arrogance. The only things “mainstream” in science are facts or theories that are basically proven to be true. Their need to provide 14/15 choir members makes one wonder how secure they are about many of issues discussed. It would be far more enlightening to pick a topic where uncertainty exists (e.g.. sensitivity) and get a complete cross-section of scientists to debate the issue. There is no need to stack the opinion deck to debate science. The debate can stand on its own. In fact, a more interesting forum would be to pick a topic and have the debate completed by “unnamed” “experts” (but qualified) so membership of select country club doesn’t play a role.

o/t: Are you aware of this interesting post by Isaac Held: http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/blog/isaac-held/2014/04/24/45-dynamic-retardation-of-tropical-warming/#more-6659 .
He describes a negative ENSO- feedback to the forcing: More warming in the tropical westpacific generates more upwelling in the tropical east pacific which leads to more LaNina-like patterns. It could be some kind of thermostat: A big part of heat goes into the heating of cool deeper waters. A possible explanation for the model-real world discrepancy especially in the eastern parts of the pacific ocean?

As Held concludes:
“I am pretty confused about the whole range of issues related to forced responses and free multi-decadal variability in the tropical Pacific. But maybe there is something to the simple idea that when warming starts kicking in rapidly enough, the eastern equatorial Pacific holds it back temporarily.”
______
This is an extremely active and exciting part of current climate research and indicates, as Judith rightly noted, there are lots of surprises to be discovered in the still developing field of climate science. As our CO2 levels now are at mid-Pliocene levels, it is interesting to note that at least one previous study noted that model reconstructions from that period of the tropical Pacific also seemed to hint at La Nina like conditions in the Pacific prevailing:

It is also extremely important to note the word “temporarily” in Held’s concluding remarks above. La Nina like conditions do not prevent energy from building up in the climate system, but simply from being transferred as readily to the troposphere. That energy will still be available to the system (i.e. greater latent and sensible heat flux in the western Pacific and more advection of energy to the polar regions via ocean currents). This once more indicates why the myopic focus on sensible tropospheric heat leads to narrow and false conclusions related to AGW.

”
But maybe there is something to the simple idea that when warming starts kicking in rapidly enough, the eastern equatorial Pacific holds it back temporarily
”

One of the models for oceanic oscillations uses a construct called a delayed differential equation (DDE). This models a periodic forcing with a delay which has the effect of creating extra harmonics in the time series, thus at least mimicking the complex waveform of ENSO.

My approach is along the same lines but starts with an extra periodic forcing only, which is the first step on the path. I am seeing how far this representation alone will take me in modeling the observations.

In the media, a forced resonance takes place where bad ideas are amplified by the talking heads. So when American radio hosts are paid by right-wing organizations millions of dollars to read from prepared scripts, this becomes the 30-to-1 leverage that non-propagandized science has to overcome.

Wow, and all this time I thought “American radio hosts” were paid from the advertising revenues generated by their shows. I did not know they were on the radio solely because they were financed by “right-wing organizations”, not because of commercial viability. You learn something new every day. Thank you for setting me straight WHT.

The most “prepared scripts” I’ve ever heard were on Air America and even their own listeners/supporters could not stomach the brazen counterfactual comedy routines and jumped ship in a matter of months.

They knew they could get a much slicker/professional/entertaining dose of propaganda to their tastes by tuning in to NPR/NBC/ABC/CNN/CBS/MSNBC……

They are looking at the documents that you skeptics are always screaming to get access to:

”
A POLITICO review of filings with the Internal Revenue Service and Federal Election Commission, as well as interviews and reviews of radio shows, found that conservative groups spent nearly $22 million to broker and pay for involved advertising relationships known as sponsorships with a handful of influential talkers including Beck, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Mark Levin and Rush Limbaugh between the first talk radio deals in 2008 and the end of 2012.

That’s really scary, webby. Conservatives spending their own money to sponsor people with whom they agree. Why can’t they be satisfied with PBS et al? Now we know why the DHS is stockpiling hundreds of millions of rounds of ammunition. You lefties better start building your bunkers.

”
• Rush Limbaugh: The Heritage Foundation at the end of January ended its five-year sponsorship of El Rushbo’s show, for which it had paid more than $2 million in some years and more than $9.5 million overall. In 2012, FreedomWorks paid at least $1.4 million to make him an endorser, though it’s not clear that the sponsorship is ongoing.

Scott Deming speaks of: ” Propagandist rhetoric dripping with contempt for science…” That is precisely the hate talk we hear from true believers of the global warming establishment. I don’t see that they practice any science by silencing opposition. They have taken over most media and are loathe to allow any criticism lf their pseudo-science to appear anywhere. After all they know the TRUTH is on their side and and it is futile to fight it.

Bart Verheggen and Mauri Pelto have blogs yet neither one has an article or blogroll link to CCNF. It’s enough to make me wonder if their hearts are really into the new forum.

Also, back in early January I wrote a comment for one of J. Nielsen-Gammon’s posts only to find out a Facebook account is necessary for the public to comment. I have no intention to ever open a Facebook account. I informed JNG about that restriction and he passed it on to Michael Quirke who posted a comment in late January saying they were going to get other comment plug-ins, but nothing has been done as of today. Not much enthusiasm being demonstrated there either.

According to Alexa the site has a global rank of 3,086,769 with 46 sites linking in. Given the apparent lack of enthusiasm by participants to promote the site I wouldn’t be surprised if the CCNF dies a slow death.

We live in a world where one in six deaths are caused by easily curable infectious diseases; one in eight deaths stem from air pollution, mostly from cooking indoors with dung and twigs; and billions of people live in abject poverty, with no electricity and little food. We ought never to have entertained the notion that the world’s greatest challenge could be to reduce temperature rises in our generation by a fraction of a degree. — Bjørn Lomborg”

After bopping around this site for a couple years and as time permits following up linked sources, I’ve come to a couple loosely held conclusions.

1) I don’t know what AGW might turn out to be (in terms of proportion in the current warming cycle) but I have developed a degree of confidence that no one else really does either. In fact, I would offer that there is an inverse ratio between the degree of certainty with which extrapolations are held and the degree of meaningful knowledge present in the statement. Bertrand Russel offers 3 hallmarks of “common sense”; that it is “cocksure, vague and self-contradictory.” Claims of “settled science” are certainly cocksure. The supporting data/models are often vague or simply unavailable. I’m still thinking about self-contradictory.

2) The primary issue with AGW is not climate science at all. Rather, it is a mash up of social science and ethics with a subtext of a naturalistic theology. It’s only new in the degree to which it has penetrated public discourse. I think Galileo would understand the current hubbub quite easily.

What can I add? Probably not much, being only a chemical engineer with a BS degree, and an attorney. However, a winning argument in climate science can be summed up as “Nature bats last.” For those not familiar with baseball, the home team bats last and has the opportunity to win the game at that time. (there are exceptions in baseball, for example if the home team is ahead after the visiting team bats in the first half of the 9th inning, the game is over and the home team does not actually bat at all.) In climate science, the Nature Bats Last rule refers to the triumph of data over models. The data can only triumph, though, when such data is valid and not manipulated toward a politically-chosen goal. So, how does one know when Nature has Batted? Skeptics, such as myself, even without the PhD in some appropriate field but with adequate tools to assess the data and evaluate the arguments, look at several things to form an opinion. First, the fundamental law that physics is impartial holds. Second, thermodynamics is always true. Third, almost all data has error in measurement (counting individual items is a rare exception). With those three fundamentals, much of climate science is shown to be full of holes. CO2 supposedly causes warming, yet adjacent sites show one warming and the other cooling. Goodridge showed this for entire counties in California. We could stop right there until that discrepancy is resolved. The ocean surface is supposedly rising at 3 mm per year (after repeated adjustments – view very very skeptically at that), yet the global map of oceans sea level trends shows some rising, some static, and some decreasing. Physics is impartial, so that requires an explanation. It is also notable that the areas in the ocean with decreasing sea levels are also those without much rainfall, while the areas rising the most have the most rainfall. That also creates serious doubt about the entire alarm over sea level rise. If the atmospheric warming is inconsistent, and sea level rise is highly questionable, the climate scientists have failed. Nature bats last.

There is a big misconception among skeptics that AGW climate change should be globally uniform and steadily upward, so that any variation from this disproves it from their point of view. To see the steady change you have to look at climate time-scales and global space scales. The effect of the pause is not even seen in either the 20- or 30-year trend because it was preceded by an often-ignored-by-skeptics sharp step in the 90’s. Perhaps this steady-rise expectation comes from the simplified views of AGW that the public gets fed, I don’t know. Should sea-level rise be steady and sea-ice loss also be steady? No. it would be strange if they were, but their trends are obvious on climate time-scales.

Jim D, you will probably never convince engineers with that argument. Data must be valid, and physics must be impartial. CO2 in the skies cannot warm one city, and cool the adjacent one. Long-term trends that agglomerate data, then average out such inconsistencies make the climate scientists who do this appear silly to the engineers. We watch the things that the climate scientists cannot manipulate, cannot massage, cannot average out and produce trends that are false. However, I’m willing to listen to the argument, if there is one, how physics can be partial, how it can be capricious. One can start, for example, on how Sacramento, CA is not warming at all, but San Francisco only 50 miles away is warming steadily. I’m sure the engineers in the audience will appreciate the answers.

It is very difficult because while skeptics promote natural variability to explain climate change, they all but suppress it to explain just the pause. You don’t know which way to argue sometimes because of this inconsistency. If you look at 30-year trends at the cities you mentioned, you would see the climate change signal. It would be very surprising if any area was the same temperature now as 30 years ago, and worth studying as an outlier.

“CO2 supposedly causes warming, yet adjacent sites show one warming and the other cooling. Goodridge showed this for entire counties in California. We could stop right there until that discrepancy is resolved.”

Maybe it is better to take all the California stations together to see climate change. Who knows what an individual thermometer site tells you? Studies like BEST control for factors at sites changing. I wouldn’t base my belief or not in climate change on two thermometer sites, and suggest that it is ill-advised for anyone to do.

Jim D, you seem to be arguing that one must look at temperatures over many years and over large geographies. So please, point me to a long record that shows the MEASURED temperature of the earth, with all measurements taken at the same exact time of day, then averaged throughout the day and across the geography. That would be a mean global temperature. Not what we have as far as I’ve seen.

To Jim D, re “If you look at 30-year trends at the cities you mentioned, you would see the climate change signal. It would be very surprising if any area was the same temperature now as 30 years ago, and worth studying as an outlier.”

While it is quite interesting that you chose a period of the last 30 years (since that start date coincides with the minor cooling period of the late 1970s and early 1980s), Sacramento shows a cooling trend for the past 30 years.

Sacramento is not alone. Also see Eureka, California on the same post. And Montgomery, Alabama, Little Rock, Arkansas, Phoenix, Arizona, Fresno, California, Los Angeles, California, San Diego, California, Grand Junction, Colorado, Washington, DC, Jacksonville, Florida, Des Moines, Iowa, Pocatello, Idaho, South Bend, Indiana, plus many more. Surely, with so many US cities having no warming, or even cooling in the past 30 years according to the HadCRUT3 data itself, you would agree that these are not outliers?

This is but one reason why climate scientists are not winning the battle to convince the skeptics. We examine the data, and expect the physics (if it truly is physics) to be consistent, not arbitrary, and not capricious.

Physicists have given the world some pretty good physics, I must admit. Gravity was a good one. Bernoulli’s equation for lower pressure in higher velocity fluids allows airplanes to fly. Thankfully, both gravity and Bernoulli are consistent and do not act capriciously. I do not want my airplane to experience a sudden decrease in gravity, or massive change or even reversal of air pressure over the wings, while I am in flight. CO2, though, acts quite capriciously. I would very much like for the climate scientists to straighten that one out. We can then proceed to many other troubling issues. But, start with the inconsistent warming.

And, I do not accept the oft-repeated reason that “micro-climates” are to blame.

Here in the Pacific NW, people point to the problems oyster growers have experienced with changing pH and say it is evidence of ocean acidification caused by increasing concentration of CO2. They quickly pass over the “fact” of upwelling currents which exist as a possible cause and completely ignore the “fact” of oyster growers solving the problem by shipping the oyster larva to Hawaii for the first few weeks of their development. I have yet to get an explanation for how atmospheric CO2 can cause a change in pH in PNW waters but not in Hawaiian waters.

I looked in some detail at the CCNF web site, and one subject I follow closely is Recent Observations. It will be interesting to see who, in the future, contributes to this part. If it is to be a truly balanced web site, then I would hope we would see some contributions for the likes of Christopher Monckton, Bob Tisdale and Werner Brosek. if we don’t see these sorts of names, then I suspect it will be a very one sided discussion. Just another place for warmists to present their case.

I wonder if the owners of the web site are actively soliciting contributions from those of us who are true skeptics/deniers.

“I wonder if the owners of the web site are actively soliciting contributions from those of us who are true skeptics/deniers.”

It truley doubt Michael Quirke would consider ‘true skeptics/deniers’ contributions for consideration. Discussions about climate sensitivity being indistinguishable from zero will not go far because that position is too far removed from our understanding of CO2 forcing on the climate. Sky Dragon Slayer ideas won’t go very far because they are far removed from our understanding of radiative heat transfer physics. Arguments about the temperature record being corrupted by adjustments and UHI influence will go nowhere because it has been widely studied and verified to be accurate. It appears to be a site active in discussing the state of climate science and not getting into politicization of the topic. It will not be a site for extreme contrarian or denier points of view. As far as you are concerned, it will be a bastion of warmist ideology. You will probably not enjoy or agree with any of it. I highly recommend you go there and check it out to broaden your horizons.

I suspect the first two words should be “I truly”. On that assumption, I specifically referred to one portion of the CCNF web site. I think I got the name wrong. It is New Observations. Now I have pointed out that some true skeptics/deniers do a magnificent job of analysing the new observed data as it is posted on various web sites. I specifically named three such people.

Are you suggesting that this sort of first class analysis should be deliberately excluded from the CCNF web site?

It was an interesting decision to put the Paltridge post up on CCNF. Clearly Paltridge had not intended it for an expert audience, and they felt their intelligence was being insulted. Paltridge’s post was not at all circumspect on the climate, only talking about the pause, not mentioning the OHC or what is happening in the Arctic. Had he wanted to write something more scientific for that audience, he would not have been able to just ignore factors that don’t fit and that the audience all know about. The same would happen if Judith wanted to post for that audience. She would have to be much more inclusive of all factors, knowing that cherry-picking doesn’t wash with a knowledgeable audience. What else doesn’t work is equating uncertainty to ignorance. As they said “uncertainty is not your friend” when it comes to planning.

Confidence comes from lines of evidence giving the same result: theory, models and observations. Also look at all the observations, current and past to paleo. If you are not going to come up with an alternative mechanistic explanation of the observations that fits as well as adding CO2, you generally won’t be listened to. For example the logic of the ocean warming argument was destroyed by Schmittner, an ocean expert, in the first comment on Paltridge. It’s good to have this kind of comment where people can see it. Unfortunately Paltridge hasn’t responded to defend himself, so we can’t call it a dialog yet.

I was just reading some of the comments on the Paltridge article. So when Rind and Chandler 2012 played around with the climate model and blamed the additional warmth on changes in albedo they were completely wrong and that warming came up from the ocean depths in some manner? They must be part of that despicable 3%.

Climatology is a mature field and new finding will more likely change the complete picture only little.

Mature to the degree that a state of radiative energy transport balance at the top of the atmosphere, and the associated exceedingly simplistic consequences, has been offered as the only aspect on which focus is necessary. However, it seems that some are realizing that other aspects are critically important. Perhaps to the extent that the other aspects might in fact be more important. Mature in all other aspects, not so much. All other things remain never changing fixed constants, of course. There’s a mature aspect, for sure.

Also the refutation of classical mechanics by quantum mechanics and relativity did not change many thinks we already understood at the time.

It is getting to be a joke whenever some fundamental approaches to descriptions of material behaviors are invoked as analogies to the status of Climate Science. That reminds me of the good ol’ days when “realizations” using GCMs were equated to actual realizations of the Navier-Stokes equations to investigate the basis nature of turbulence. And the times that statistical mechanics is similarly invoked.

There is a singular, and of upmost importance, critical difference between those, proven, descriptions of materials and the status of Climate Science. The proven fundamental laws will not ever, as in never, incorporate descriptions of previous states that the materials have previously attained. Never. Instead, the proven fundamental laws will always solely contain descriptions of properties of the materials.

The GCMs are based on approximate models of some parts of some fundamental equations, plus a multitude of empirical descriptions of states that the materials in the system have previously attained. Even some of the approximate models will contain parameters that represent previous states of the materials, and are not material properties. Many of the empirical descriptions are somewhat, or completely, ad hoc ( for this case only ). The multitude of parameterizations do all the heavy lifting relative to the fidelity of the results of the model to physical reality.

A “realization” by a GCM is a “realization” of the processes captured by the descriptions of the previous states. Such “realizations” are not in any way actual realizations of the materials that make up the the Earth’s climate systems.

The distinctions between descriptions based on material properties and empirical estimates of previous states, the latter are characterized as ‘process models’, are at such a critical basis that they must always be kept in mind. Climate Science seems to completely ignore these distinctions and continues to invoke false analogies.

One experiment can prove a theory wrong
1 Curry to 30 lemmings is getting close to Einstein’s understanding of science. When asked about a book in which 100 Nazi professors condemned Einstein’s theory of relativity, Einstein responded to Jacob Epstein:

Why would a 30:1 ratio be needed to maintain “balance”?
1) Curry is an incredibly clever trickster, like Loki in the Thor movies.
2) the “30” are incredibly bad debaters
3) the alarmist scientific case is not as strong as claimed.
Pick any one you like.

The point is that you can’t neutralize plausible alternative interpretations of the available evidence from diminishing the scientific ‘consensus.’ It only takes one such argument, and one person making it (but in fact there are numerous arguments and a substantial number of people making them).

Amen!

The only way would be to forcibly silence all dissenting views completely (as some extremists have suggested should be done).

That may work in the editing of IPCC reports but will not be tolerated in a free society.

Stipulated: the world has warmed by .6C over the past 50 years.
Stipulated: running a model with and without anthro forcing leads to a conclusion that we can be 95% certain that .3C to .6C of the warming
is human caused.

Question: how certain are we that climate models adequately represent internal variablity such that our 95% confidence is maintained. That is,
are we certain that this method of attribution is correct? Do models that cannot replicate internal variability have the chops to evalute its contribution?

Answer, given the acknowledged uncertainty in the models, all model results are conditioned by this uncertainty. No result, including an attribution result, can stand alone without an assesment of model reliability.

If the mystery meat says it is so…it must be so. The 95% is an expert judgment and is not derived by actual statistics or underlying measurements is my understanding. The range of contribution (51% to 95%) wasn’t picked as a result of some actual math is my guess, 51% = “most”.

What would really be interesting is if we could wager on this proposition. That is, **** bet the IPCC at 20:1 odds *** that the human proportion is 50% or less. Please let me in….what is the table limit?

I think the odds once the betting open would swing pretty quickly and we would get a much more realistic estimate.

Unfortunately we don’t have man thermometers out there, so it is unclear we will ever really know this number to an acceptable degree to get a payout. One can dream.

Steven, In your stipulation, all you’ve really said is an average over temperatures is OK to use as an ‘index’. So a couple of question to you, if increasing temperature means “warming,” what does increasing “index” mean? Global “indexing”?

“[..] But the absolute intolerance of some academic scientists for anyone that disagrees with them is very disturbing.”
=================================

This rings a favorite bell for me. In climate-gate email #26@1 Phil Jones relates that
“I recall giving lectures in the past when there would be one person
who would disagree with something or all I said in an invited talk.”

In disciplines I am more directly familiar with, people regularly said nothing openly at the time, but 10 yards down the corridor at the end of the seminar were expressing their doubts to friends and colleagues in no uncertain terms.

When a speaker occasionally managed to raise the ire of a much larger fraction of the audience, there was still only one or two people who spoke up: They let others do their objecting for them.

If Phil Jones was regularly getting at least one very strong exception during his invited seminars, then perhaps the universe was actually trying to tell him something.

Our hostess writes “The format of the comments is that there are two threads: one for the member participating scientists, primarily related to fact checking, and the other for public comments and discussion.”

I searched the web site for this “other”. and could not find it. I presumed that I could sign on to participate. Could someone direct me to the place on the website where I can sign up?

After reading all the posts currently on the new forum, i would not like to walk in your shoes, every post i have read so far has nothing to do with science imo. I was hoping that this blog would sweep me of my feet with people talking about cutting edge science. What i have seen so far are a couple of pompous men who come storming in the room.

As an example here i would like to give the example off the first comment of Joshua. He has a point offcourse, but is it really necessary to keep hitting until it bleeds?

Anyway, i wish you well with this decision and i hope for you that i will become what you hoped.

What do you imagine that joshie’s point is, Arnold? He does that every time Judith writes a post or a casual comment. He is here to harass Judith, because it makes him feel like a big man. That’s joshie’s game. It’s banal.

Don, the point he is making is that “absolute” is to harsh of a word, and technically he is right. But i suspect that he is not really interested about the language used, if so, he could have just made the remark, ask her to change the word and stop there.

And that is the same with most of the arguments of this new blog. Maybe these people are right, but even if this was the case, i doubt that if they where behaving like this in “real” life they would be getting any attention.

the climate system as a whole keeps on warming and that only more of the warming went into the ocean rather than the atmosphere during the last decade

Really? How interesting. Why did it suddenly decide to do that?

Presumably that increased warming of the oceans would have caused a change in the rate of expansion of said oceans, thus putting an upward kink in the sea level trace around ten years ago. Where is it? As far as I know, rather the opposite is the case.

As for Victor Venema’s “Climatology is a mature field and new finding will more likely change the complete picture only little”, you’re kidding, right?

Any climate modeler knows that the global mean temperature can remain flat or even decreasing for a few years in the output from their runs. But they’re betting on the assumption that in the long term the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases will take over and warm the planet, because that’s what the models are showing. It’s just how this discipline has evolved, and how this type of scientists has forgotten the distinction between assumptions and reality. The models are not evaluated for their accuracy in matching the current observations, but for how well they reproduce the forcings. Go figure.

The longer the temperature follows the theory, the more confident they will get in their projections. The rise since 1950 is in the center of what they would have expected. That is how it works, and how it should work. Some want to scrap this theory that works for something yet to be determined. It just doesn’t cut it. In science, you don’t scrap a working theory unless you find something that explains the observations even better. This is hard to do for the unprecedented magnitude and speed of this temperature rise which is near 0.7 C in 60 years. There just isn’t another mechanism, and then they also have to explain why it isn’t CO2 with a positive feedback, which is even harder given the physical basis of that idea.

Little upside down jimmy dee. We don’t have to prove anything, jimmy. We ain’t trying to jam anything down anybody’s throat. We ain’t clamoring for carbon taxes, silly green subsidies and other useless schemes. It’s your lot that’s struggling, jimmy. Try to pretend you aren’t in a panic over the pause. Pretty soon it’s going to be known as the cessation. Come to grips with it, jimmy.

Don M, this is probably why the skeptics aren’t being listened to by the scientists. They don’t have anything except “no, it is not that”, or “I don’t know, but it is not that”. At some point they will have to produce something if they want to be heard. It’s just the way science works.

This is the quite bizarre idea that emerges again and again – high and low – with climate fanatics. It emerged again in the site under discussion in I believe – http://climatechangenationalforum.org/deep-ocean-warming/ – in the virtually certainly untried, untested and untrue assumption that internal variability simply shifts energy around the planet. How can you take what purports to be science of this caliber seriously? If only – it seems – they can convince enough people of what is patently the product of neglecting enough scientific reality everything will work out.

I think it is because anomalous information just doesn’t make it past the groupthink filter.

Climate is emergent behaviour in a deterministic chaotic system characterised by abrupt changes in ocean and atmospheric circulation and consequential changes in cloud radiative forcing.

The latest ‘climate shift’ in 1998/2001 involved an increase in cloud that persists to this day and seems likely to persist for a decade to three more as the central Pacific stays relatively cool.

JimD, Actually the skeptics have made a very good case provided you consider genuine skeptics and not the dragon slayer ilk. The argument is really quite simple, a doubling of atmospheric CO2 equivalent gases will produce approximately 3.7 Wm-2 of forcing. Depending on which “surface” you select, that forcing will produce 0.8 to 1.5 C of “surface” temperature increase provided all other things remain equal. Things will never remain equal and there is no indication that anything more than 0.8 to 1.5 C can be expected and due to the massive heat capacity of the oceans realizing the full impact will take centuries.

captd, nice, but it fails to fit the actual warming since 1950 by a long way. What fits best there is over 2 C per doubling of CO2, 3 C if you allow for a lag. I suspect this is why it didn’t gain much traction. Fit the obs is a minimum requirement to get in the door these days. Plenty of obs now.

JimD, It fits perfectly. Cowtan and Way picked a lower to mid troposphere surface and can get a higher warming rate by fudging temperatures below -20C impacted by Arctic winter warming after decreeing that sea ice is actually land in disguise. A 5 C increase from -30C to -25C in NH winter is not going to have a hell of a lot of impact on habitability. Then when you consider the actual uncertainty of the temperature stations in the region of the dramatic warming you would see they are playing with themselves.

I am not talking to scientists, jimmy. I am talking to an anonymous blog character, who merely parrots the party-line propaganda of climate alarmism. Don’t pretend that you are a champion of the science, jimmy. Your encouragement of skeptics to come up with their own theories is just diversionary BS. Don’t you remember that the climate science is settled? No new theories need apply. You are too inept to fool anybody, jimmy. If you really wanted do the the alarmist cause some good, you would switch sides.

I am guessing that you probably spend some of your time on some un-progressive blog defending other goofy progressive causes, like Obamacare. The playbook would be very similar. Well, yeah our Obamacare that was foisted on the nation, despite the opposition of a majority of the populace, is having some problems getting started but you are stuck with it because the Repubs didn’t have their own plan. Of course that’s a lie. They had plenty of plans, including the one of sticking with a healthcare system that most people were happy with. Well, the progressives got their way and in November, the doo doo will hit the fan. Good luck on getting silly green subsidies and carbon taxes out of the new un-progressive Repub Congress, jimmy.

Skippy, that post was written by a climate scientist whose specialty is climate modeling. Now you know why the models will never work. They don’t understand the difference between closed and open systems.

I wish I were as confident in the Repubs as you seem to be, DM. McCain, Boehner, and some other Repubs must belong to the Twelve Step program, Democrats Anonymous. Step 1: We admitted we were powerless over corporations – that our party had become unmanageable. Step 2: Came to believe that only acting like a Democrat could restore us to power. Step 3: Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to Obama as we understood him.

captd, it has nothing to do with Cowtan and Way. You only have to look at HADCRUT4 which underestimates the polar warming, and even this shows over 2 C per doubling since 1950. When the skeptics go with low-ball estimates like Lewis, they forget to check it against what has actually happened in the last 60 years. It just doesn’t fit.

If you do not use Cowtan and Way, then you have no way of stating that HadCRUT4 underestimates polar warming. Since there is no actual data that would support such a conjecture. The only way you can opine that HadCRUT4 is under REPORTING the polar warming is through models. Models that sadly have shown to be far from accurate.

Jimd, “You only have to look at HADCRUT4 which underestimates the polar warming,”

Hadcru4 doesn’t underestimate polar warming it just doesn’t include polar land surface estimates for ice covered SST. BEST’s new combine land and ocean shows both methods and are right in the middle of the averages. GISS has polar issues most noticably starting after the addition of the Antarctic interpolations and all polar temperature estimates are much more uncertain than the majority of the globe.

Sensitivity assumes that everything else remains constant. There has rarely been a more ludicrously unlikely scenario in the long annals of pseudo science.

Models are chaotic and have multiple divergent solutions for the feasible parameters and couplings. Each model has a range of plausible solutions in with limits that are undefined. A single solution is chosen qualitatively on the basis of what appears to the modeler to be a plausible solution – and graphed along with other qualitative selections from other models.

Best to regard models not merely with disdain as to the accuracy but as something more akin to fraudulent misrepresentation.

What is really funny is when internet dimwits lecture people like Curry and Tsonis in simplistic and utterly erroneous catchphrases and smarmily condescending tones about how they have got it all wrong.

What would it take to get to an effective and pragmatic global development and environmental policy? A lot more than webby, Joshua, lolwot, gates and jimmy dee have in the tank I would surmise.

“t fits perfectly. Cowtan and Way picked a lower to mid troposphere surface and can get a higher warming rate by fudging temperatures below -20C impacted by Arctic winter warming after decreeing that sea ice is actually land in disguise. ”

WRONG.

The temperatures are used for there pattern only not the absolute values.
Further, I passed AIRS data along to them. AIRS gives you a surface air temp. Guess what?

HADCRUT is biased. All the evidence points to a bias NO EVIDENCE NO DATA indicates that HADCRUT is correct. All data, data from stations that hadcrut does have, data from two different satillities, data from long series
of surface skin temp (AVHRR, cosimo ), data from Bouys, New data from a couple stations recently rescued, confirmation by reanalysis.. ALL DATA, several different methods, All indicate that HADCRUT is biased. No out of sample data, no alternative method, Nothing zip zero, indicates that HADCRUT is correct

Why people, especially skeptics, continue to defend Jones data is beyond me. I guess you have an agenda that differs from the truth. Ignoble cause corruption.

Mosher, most of the “warming” is still Arctic winter warming which is related to lower mid troposphere conditions. By sensationalizing the warming, mainly situations like -25C instead of -30C which is generally out of phase with temperatures in lower latitudes, they are making mountains out of molehills. On an energy basis there is virtually nothing going on other than slightly increased high latitude winter heat loss.

‘Mosher, most of the “warming” is still Arctic winter warming which is related to lower mid troposphere conditions.

Wrong. The warming in the arctic is how the planet expresses the imbalance at TOA. The mid troposphere doesnt ’cause’ the excess heat to transferred poleward.
############################
By sensationalizing the warming, mainly situations like -25C instead of -30C which is generally out of phase with temperatures in lower latitudes, they are making mountains out of molehills.

Wrong. Nobody is making a mountain out of a molehill. HADCRUT is biased.
Correcting that is good science.

###############
On an energy basis there is virtually nothing going on other than slightly increased high latitude winter heat loss.

Look the HADCRUT and GISS records are wrong. Skeptics have complained about them for years. Now we have more data.
Now we have better, skeptic approved and skeptic INSPIRED methods.
Adding more data, using skeptic methods we are fixing the damn problems in GISS and HADCRUT.

If the fix went the other way, you’d slap us on the back.
But the fix didnt go your way.

Mosher, “Look the HADCRUT and GISS records are wrong. Skeptics have complained about them for years.”

They are all wrong but within specified tolerences. Nothing is perfect. There is a +/- 0.15 C degrees of irreducible imprecision. By that I mean that there can be zero net change in true surface energy while there is +/- 0.15C variation in “global mean surface temperature” for whatever that is worth. It is the energy that counts not unweighted temperature anomaly.

your suggestion that climate policy is due to the “dissenting” science, is patently ridiculous. Can you tell me what new evidence caused Newt Gingrich to remove his chapter on Climate change, JUST as he was running for president? what new info did ANY of the republican’s who used to support some policy action on climate change get. Even Huntsman had to grovel and beg some forgiveness. what new info did Lindsey Graham get to change his mind about ACC?. While there are some “dissenters” that are not willing to just flat our lie and completely misrepresent actual science, the majority of posts, opinions, etc that I see on MSM which oppose action on climate change are filled with garbage science even you could not possibly contend is valid science. Maybe ACC is seriously flawed and we will discover hardly any consequences, as unlikely as I think that is, the CURRENT policy position of the republican party ( and the dems who are ALL, oddly, from states dependent on fossil fuels) has nothing to do with science and everything to do with ideology and election campaigns

“and the dems who are ALL, oddly, from states dependent on fossil fuels”

Heh, funny that. You would think they would work hard to abandon all those dirty jobs in order to possibly, maybe save the planet from thermageddon sometime way in the future after they are all long gone instead of represent the people who elected them to ensure they have jobs so they can live today. Dumb democrats, they just don’t seem to get it do they. Only true democrats who represent non fossil fuel dependent electorates seem to get it, right Tony? If only all those republicans and dumb democrats could be magically disappeared, why it would be like the Garden of Eden…. oops, didn’t mean to offend you with a biblical term, rather it would be like the age of Aquarious… Nirvana. Awesome!

Tony
Some have gotten in trouble doing this. You have exposed yourself. It only took 2 sentences to show your views on global warming are ideologically driven. Keep it up, you are superbly reinforcing a very popular stereotype.

don Montford. Pointing out that the actions of republicans who had tried to take a “reasonable” position pin climate change, suddenly changed their minds when running for president or possible primary challenge sounds desperate to you? Gingerich removed an entire chapter on climate change form his book when he saw that would cost him any possibility of the nomination. Huntsman KNEW he couldn’t win and STILL had to backtrack.
I point out the obviously stupid arguments on MSM all the time from people like Krauthammer and Will who just spout propaganda.
Does Judith believe scientists made up global cooling in the 70’s and that didn’t work so they made up global warming?
does Judith believe that the changed it from Global warming to Climate change to “fool” people?
does she believe that scientists have purposefully and fraudulently reduced past temps and inflated current temps?
does Judith believe that the arctic is NOt losing ice because GLOBAL sea ice is normal?
DOEs she believe that scientists ignore solar radiation because it fits “perfectly” with current warming?
I notice she makes no effort to pin point her actual beliefs on these and many other issues,I have never seen her comment on Omanuel’s (sp?) often bizarre claims of fraud and conspiracy.
why is that?

Couldn’t quite understand what you mean. could you repeat it in a way that makes some sense?
Maybe you are under the impression that politician’s of either party are not subject to election pressures based on opinions in their district.
Certianly It tookl a little while for elected reps in N.C. S.C. Virginia, and other tobacco states to vote to kill jobs for their hard working tobacco constituents. We also know that legislators took a lot of convincing in areas where asbestos production made jobs.
I am guessing that a few people in W.V. have changed their minds about Fossil fuels, when they couldn’t drink their water fro a few weeks.
Age of Aquarius. Yes, I remember thinking that way when I was 12

yes, people like Romney say there is still too much uncertainty. I do not see them charging in if temps rise dramatically and saying, “OK, there is less uncertainty now, let’s REALLY regulate CO2 much harder now because we didn’t when we were unsure”

Perhaps republicans noticed that the models upon which the predictions of warming and other changes in conditions that would be potential issues for humans are not happening as fast as was predicted.

Perhaps they noticed that the largest single concern, (the potential for a rapid increase in the rate of sea level rise) is not happening.

Perhaps they noticed that in a world with limited financial resources that climate mitigation actions be discussed in the USA can not be shown to have ANY benefit in reducing the potential feared changes in conditions to any measureable extent.

So Tony- what specifically do you think makes sense from a policy perspective for the USA? (jailing republicans is a not starter- be realistic please)

“what new info did ANY of the republican’s who used to support some policy action on climate change get?”

The same new information that James Lovelock got when he changed his mind about the science. The same new information that George Monbiot and James Hansen got when they changed their minds about the solutions (much to the chagrin of Democrats who insist on opposing nuclear for ideological reasons). The same new information that the leaders of EU countries got when they decided to backtrack on subsidies for wind and solar.
The same new information that you reject out of ideological blindness, ie the simple fact that growth in natural gas, nuclear, and hydro-electric are the only policy options that actually reduce emissions and Democrats are the ones standing in the way of their development.
But, since we’re asking, what new information do you have that the progressive partisan approach to AGW policy is working?

I am sure I am biased, and I am aware of that bias, so I take pains to not let that limit my thinking and openness.

GCM’s are not meant to predict warming on scales where natural variability can mask other forcings. It COULD be an indication of much less sensitivity than most scientists believe, but assuming that is the case without examining other relevant factors, seems very biased to me. There are a number of empirical factors that are occurring as predicted or faster, such as the loss of Arctic ice.

Not sure that sea level rise is the single largest concern. But even if it is, I see hardly any likelihood of sea evils not increasing. Living in VT and NY, and going through both Irene and Sandy, and the tens of billions that those storms cost, it seems like there is already a cost of not taking both mitigating and adaptive actions even if sea level increase is significantly less than a meter by the end of the century.

Assuming that US actions will have no impact on global response to ACC also seems extremely biased. In my view the lack of US leadership in limiting CO2 has allowed other countries to avoid taking strong action. In my view they are quite justified from a purely selfish perspective. US legislation that firmly addressed climate change and pressure on international agreements would have a strong impact on global response.

As for policy recommendations, since Republicans are unwilling to support Cap and trade, ( which was a republican idea) then a revenue neutral carbon tax seems reasonable to me. WSJ (http://on.wsj.com/S843Lx) has suggested having a tax that gets returned to citizen’s this would not increase net taxes, and it could be adjusted as we gained a better understanding of the actual consequences of increasing CO2 levels

I immediately ridiculed Lovelock, when he made his crazy predictions in “Revenge of Gaia”. That he has admitted they were wrong, at least takes him out of the “bats hit crazy” category. His predictions were not consistent with any scientists understanding for the issue.
I do not reject nuclear or hydro out of hand, and the transition value of natural gas has value as well. EVERY energy source has positives and negatives. I am not interested in ideological shibboleths. I don’t see a lot of democrats standing in the way of natural gas, certainly Obama has presided over the largest increase in natural gas production in world history.
I DO oppose ignoring that CO2 is likely to have a significant impact on global climate over the next century. Republicans oppose even measures they promoted, such as cap and trade.
and there has been NO evidence that undermines the likelihood of CO2 being a GHG forcing agent. all the evidence points to republicans being willing to ignore their actual beliefs in pursuit of public office.

You state that “there has been NO evidence that undermines the likelihood of CO2 being a GHG forcing agent”.

Actually, there is STRONG evidence that aerosol reduction is the cause of the warming that has occurred, with little or no contribution from CO2

Google “Observed Tendencies in Surface Solar Radiation”. Select “images” on the toolbar that appears, and view the image with the same title (the image with the blue and red arrows)

It shows that the 1980 – 2000 efforts in the USA and Europe to reduce air pollution resulted in increased incident solar radiation (insolation) in those areas, which would naturally cause surface warming.

Thiis warming, if properly subtracted from the warming attributed to CO2, would easily reduce the greenhouse gas contribution to zero.

Trends Tony, not personal experiences. Show trends in hurricanes hitting the NYC area, if you can. As far as personal experiences I’m sure the natives of Long Island were quite miserable when the worst storm to hit the area, that we have evidence of, occurred around 1350.

Burl Henry, Aerosol reduction after 1980 certainly contribute to explain some of the temperature rise after 1980, and the slowdown after 1940 likewise is partly explained by the increase in aerosol pollution, but it doesn’t explain the 0.8°C rise in surface temperature since 1880.

Solar activity rose from 1880 to about 1980 which would account for some of the temperture rise (see “Temperature versus Solar Activity”) graph from Skeptical Science. Most, however, occurred 1n the 1970 – 2000 time-frame after implementation of the Clean Air Acts and similar efforts abroad, and thus would have been aerosol related.

Burl,
Not sure I understand. Are you saying there was some other driver of global temp increases in the 60’s and 70’s that was masked by Aerosols, and when that decreased the temps increased rapidly in the 90’s?
How does that relate to the large increase in Asian pollution in the last 20 year? should temps have done way down this decade, or do you believe that same forcing going on from the 70’s is still operating in one direction?
I traveled to India and China in the late 80’s early 90’s and pollution then was much worse than any I had ever experienced in the 60’s in the US.
If you are correct, it seems like a very easy answer that should have no problem being proven by scientists like Curry, Spencer, or Lindzen.
but curry never seems to say anything about these “proofs” that ACC is completely wrong even when they are posted on her own blog?
Burl, why do you think that is?

No, I am not saying that the removal of aerosols unmasked:warming due to other causes, aerosol removal WILL cause temperatures to rise simply because of greater insolation.

For example, the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1991 injected 17 – 20 Megatons of SO2 into the atmosphere, causing global cooling of 0.3-0.4 deg. C. After the aerosols settled out of the atmosphere, temperaturees rose to pre-eruption levels because of the restored levels of insolation (0.23 deg C temp rise, per NASA.)

From the above, it can be inferred that the removal of 17-20 Megatons of SO2 from the atmospere should cause an equivalelnt temperature rise of about 0.3-0.4 deg C.

According to the EPA, 1980-2000, 10 Megatons of SO2 were removed from the atmosphere in the USA due to the Clean Air Acts. In Europe, 1980-1998, 33 Megatons of SO2 were removed. Thus the 17-20 Megaton “threshold” for a temperature rise of 0.3-0.4 deg C was easily met (and exceeded), and the removal of that quantity of aerosols guarantees that all of the warming 1980-2000 was due solely to the removal of aerosols.

(The same, of course, was also occurring 1970-1980, but that data does not appear to be available. But all of the warming 1970-2000 was due solely to aerosol reduction, since warming HAS to occur when they are removed)

The pictograph that I had directed you to (“Observed Tendencies in Surface Solar Radiation”) clearly shows the increase in insolation (and hence, warming) that occurred 1980-2000), proving that the aerosol reduction described above did indeed increase insolation.

The image further shows increasing insolation in the USA and Europe from 2000-present, but temperatures have “paused” because the warming in the West is currently being offset by the massive pollution (resulting in less insolation) in the East

Warming may resume whwn the East cleans up its air, unless temperatures have “plateaued” at current levels.

I , too, have wondered about Dr. Curry’s lack of comments on alternate explanatins of the cause of climate change, since they could help to hone one’s arguments or completely destroy them–or to grant a seal of approval. Perhaps she just wants to stay above the fray. But she may be doing the world a great dis-service by not vetting them.

I do not know if there are any trends toward more frequent or worse storms. It will probably take another decade of warming (if it happens) to make really strong statements about those issues.
What I was referring to was Sea Level. Clearly the sea level is higher now than it was in 1350, or 1821 in NY, and therefore a lesser storm will cause more damage than if sea level had not changed. There certainly seem to be indications that some unusual things are happening. Both Sandy and Irene were immense storms that may well have been larger and more powerful because of climate change.
It is a logical fallacy to content hat because current weather events do not supersede the worst events ever recorded that there is no effect from climate change.
As you say. it is the trends that count

Burl,
Still not understanding.
If the only factor effecting global temp changes recently is pollution limiting insolation, why have temps risen substantially over the last 100 years?
also, My anecdotal evidence says that asian pollution was extreme by the 80’s, and I think has only gotten worse. you are saying that the clean up in N.A. and Europe completely overwhelms the effect of the worsening in Asia during the same time frame and it is only after 2000 that asian pollution became a dominant factor?
your argument seem to be the same as Schneiders in the 70’s that so many constantly ridicule. so it sounds like you are saying that his argument was basically correct back then, and it is only the clean up that has prevented decreasing temps from happening now?

You ask why temperatures have risen substantially over the past 100 years.

For one thing, solar irradience was inceasing from 1880 to about 1980, which would have contributed to the background warming. However, there were also early activities which would have resulted in aerosol reductions, such as the electrification of factories and homes, the development of hydropower, and, starting in the early 1950’s , the replacemet of coal-fired plants with atomic energy,.factory modernizations, etc… .

The warming in the 1930’s was also related to the reduction of aerosols due to the greatly reduced industrial activity during the Great Depression, and ended with the renewed industrial pollution of the WWII era and later.

But the greatest amount of warming did not begin until environmental concerns with urban smog, acid rain, etc. began to be acted upon, culminating in the Clean Air Acts and similar efforts abroad.. This warming differs from the earlier warming trends because of the directed focus on intentionally reducing aerosols, and thus should NOT be included in any “100 year warming trend line”

Regarding the pollution in the East, the graph of “Anthropogenic Sulfur Dioxide Emissions 1850 – 2005″ by Smith et al shows the East Asian SO2 emissions overtaking those of the West around 1980, so your observations over there are understandable.

(I wonder whether this past winter was an indication that the Eastern pollution has now overcome the off-setting warming of the West. Perhaps we should help them clean up their air?)

I am not aware of Schneiders observations so I cannot comment upon them

If you really believe that the GOP stands in the way of fracking and nuclear power, you have a tenuous grip on reality.
The facts are clear- the alternatives to coal and oil that work do not face any opposition from Republicans. They do face opposition from Democrats. If you cared a whit about CO2 emissions, you could move forward in a bi-partisan fashion today. Instead, you insist on so-called “policies” that are known to be ineffective – cap and trade, renewables, UN slush-funds for dictators, etc. – but are great partisan tools.
Don’t misunderstand me, it doesn’t bother me at all that you’d rather play the part of political hack than that of someone interested in the actual issue. But that’s because I’m not very concerned about AGW, and I’m unwilling to pretend that you are.

Tony, if there are indications something unusual is happening it would be nice if you could point to something other than your gut feeling. As far as I can tell the trend line of sea level rise is too close to say there has been any change since 1850. I will say this. You can bet if either of those storms had been the worst in a millenium we would be hearing about it and it would be tied to global warming when there were still bodies floating off shore.

What is happening to Judith here is like what happened to Roger Pielke Jr. at 538.com. Nate Silver is a thoughtful person who believes in data. So he published a mild and thoughtful piece by Pielke Jr on his new venture, 538.c0m.

So it seems that the newest game in town to to trash honest and thoughtful scientists wherever they might poke their head up in a place that tries to be both thoughtful and mainstream, and make it impossible for them to continue.

In the case of 538.com, a commercial venture, ESPN (the host) doesn’t want to have Nate Silver lose readership and thus advertising, so Silver probably won’t be allowed to try THAT again.

In Judith’s case, this new blog isn’t commercial, so they can’t make advertising go away. So it is back to same old, same old: attack the person, make it ad hominem, don’t really allow a debate, because that might (gasp!) legitimize an argument that the alarmists DO NOT want to have legitimized.

Free expression was a big deal when I was growing up. Not so much any more, very much to my regret. It is amazing how much these people will do to stifle honest debate.

Dr. White seems to think that we might get 75 feet of sea level rise because CO2 levels are now over 380 ppm, and he states “Bye bye to Florida for the most part.”

If this is the level of science on that blog, then count me out. This particular blog post is unfortunately, quite ignorant of solid, recent science.

To try to be fair to CCNF, there is some gentle dissent to White’s prognostications. Dr. Schmittner says “The 380-400 ppm is a good estimate, although 75 ft seems a little high…” And Dr. Pelto says “Will just point out some recent research indicating soils that have been buried continuously beneath the Greenland Ice Sheet for the last 3 million years….”

But these comments are far too mild. Any scientist knowledgeable about sea level rise in the last several million years would be aware of the recent science on Greenland. To wit, during the Eemian, the previous interglacial, Greenland was 8 degrees warmer than today for 6,000 years, 60 centuries. And during that considerably warmer time period it lost about 1/4 (one quarter) of its ice. That is less than two meters of sea level rise over 60 centuries, or a bit over an inch a century. Here is the link:

And the key quote: “But despite the warm temperatures, the ice sheet did not disappear and the research team estimates that the volume of the ice sheet was not reduced by more than 25 percent during the warmest 6,000 years of the Eemian.”

Surely that says that Greenland will contribute very little to sea level rise in a warmer world, even a warmer world that stays warm for two or three centuries.

What Dr. White seems to think is that both CO2 and temperatures will continue to rise for, seemingly, many centuries to millennia. But surely the world will switch to solar as soon as it becomes cost effective, which is likely to start somewhere between 10 and 20 years from now for urban locations (sides and tops of buildings) in places like the US.

Solar is already the electricity technology of choice in rural Africa and India; it is even possible that as with cell phones (which leapfrogged land line technology, making it obsolete before it was built in places like Thailand), solar panels might make an electric grid obsolete, at least for a while, in many rural and developing parts of the world. All the while becoming cheaper with more manufacturing.

The point that Dr. White studiously ignores is that society isn’t going to keep on burning fossil fuels at an ever increasing rate. His scenario cannot come about unless we continue, as a world, to keep increasing CO2 for several centuries to come, and no one wants or will allow that to happen.

So it is hard for me not to see this new web site as tending toward alarmism.

Math underlies physics which includes chemistry, climate science, and other disciplines. Math has been seen as neutral by many observers. But now, it is the key to the government’s ability to spy on citizens. It is also key to quality climate science papers that rely heavily on mathematical techniques. These techniques have to be used correctly in order for a paper’s conclusions to be valid. Here an article on this general subject – math as a central player in our lives …

…
And so to the mathematicians’ role in all of this. The NSA claims to be the largest employer of mathematicians in the US. It may be the largest in the world. It part funds GCHQ, also a major employer of mathematicians, and works closely with intelligence agencies in Australia, New Zealand and Canada. Some mathematicians work for these agencies full-time. Others do so during summer breaks or sabbaticals from their university jobs.

We will never know exactly what mathematicians have done for these agencies. GCHQ does not comment on intelligence matters, which is to say, anything it does. But revelations by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden suggest some possibilities.
…
Mathematicians seldom face ethical questions. We enjoy the feeling that what we do is separate from the everyday world. As the number theorist G. H. Hardy wrote in 1940: “I have never done anything ‘useful’. No discovery of mine has made, or is likely to make, directly or indirectly, for good or ill, the least difference to the amenity of the world.”

That idea is now untenable. Mathematics clearly has practical applications that are highly relevant to the modern world, not least internet encryption.

Our work, then, can be used for both good and ill. Unfortunately for us, it is the latter that is in the public eye. Already unpopular for our role in the banking crash, we now have our largest employer running a system of whole-population surveillance that even a judge appointed by George W. Bush called “almost Orwellian”.
…

Jim2: I agree with much of what you say about math. Mathematics did not become really useful until computers were able to exploit them in mathematical models. As a pioneer in the field (see my website underlined above) I can rejoice the ability to simulate any dynamic system, provided you understand each and every process involved. Mathematics now has the tools to do that for the first time.

The lack of success with IPCC models simply indicates that each and every process in the climate models is not well enough understood. Where the IPCC went wrong was in their original dictum ‘the science is settled’ from which they have never really recovered. For example, their failure to look more deeply into the vibration modes of the CO2 molecule.

I think you are correct about the computer models. Not only is it likely we haven’t identified all the relevant mechanisms of climate, from what I’ve read, current affordable computer power isn’t up to modeling at all the scales of phenomena we DO know about.

Even though many aspects of climate, and weather, have well understood drivers, even some of those can’t be modeled with fidelity. An example is annual, global air temperature variation. The planetary physics that drive annual variation are well understood and can be modeled. And yet, if you look at actual data, you can see the apparent imprint of chaos. For different years, the rate of rise of temperature will be slightly different in any given month. The global temperature will peak at slightly different times and temperatures. There are a lot of wiggles in the data that don’t match between two given years. It’s a messy business, our climate.

Hopefully CCNF can stimulate some dialogue about genuine controversies in climate science,

The Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) has a different methodology,in its horizon scan retreat it openly invited questions for both underlying problems in geophysics etc for the southern continent, and future directions for research

I can’t speak to the religious aspects of what Judith deserves. But I do know that if there ever is a Climate Science Hall of Fame, she should be a charter member. The Team? They will have to wait for the Old Timers Committee vote.

Do we have any actual evidence that heat has been transferred to the deep oceans? I would be very interested to know if this is anything beyond conjecture.
Also, if this is in fact the case – then why do proponents of AGW persist in pushing all of the other “indicators” which then shouldn’t be changing – e.g. glacial melt etc.

Mark,
Over the past 10 years the data indicating that the deep ocean is warming even faster than the surface has gotten better and better thanks to the thousands of ARGO floats spread all over the world’s oceans. Year by year the experts confidence that the deeper oceans (and the full ocean) is gaining energy goes up.

But what you should also realize is that (despite suggestions to the contrary), energy in the ocean doesn’t just sit there or disperse harmlessly like you’d dissolve a bit of salt in a glass of water. Rather, the wind and currents and natural ocean dynamics concentrate additional energy is specific areas of the global ocean– the most important of which is the IPWP (the source region of ocean energy for El Ninos). Additional energy in the ocean is also advected toward the polar regions, where, as in the case of the Arctic sea ice and Greenland tidal glaciers, the warmer water actually melts the ice from the bottom. Few people realize that the majority of the melting that goes on in these areas comes from under the water and so as more energy has been advected via the ocean currents to the polar regions, it has had the effect of increased melt.

Victor Venema : “If the “Fact checker” stays this way, I would suggest all scientists to stop participating in CCNF.”.
JC : “I think what CCNF is trying to do is a good idea. […] But the absolute intolerance of some academic scientists for anyone that disagrees with them is very disturbing.”.

I too think that what CCNF s trying to do is a good idea. Or at least, what it says it is trying to do. The key to everything in science surely is fact-checking, of which the testing of hypotheses is a part. Even long-established theories are still subject to fact-checking for ever. Sometimes boundaries to a theory are found, rather than an outright failure – eg. Newtonian physics is stil very valid, but we now recognise that it has boundaries at both the large and small ends (and custard!).

Surely the best approach is to welcome input from the Garth Paltridges and JCs of the scientific world, and enter into discussion using established facts, but on the basis that every fact is still open to checking. That way, progress can be made in a properly scientific manner. If facts like the sudden decision of the warmth to go into the deep ocean instead of the atmosphere survives the checking, then progress is made. If it fails, then progress is made. If it is not checked, science goes backwards.

To Victor Venema I would say : Please reconsider your position. Engage the ‘opposition’, explain to them carefully why they are wrong, insist that they put their ‘facts’ on the table for checking, and put your facts on the table for checking too. If you are right then you will prevail, but in any case science will benefit.

If Lorenz was right, and a butterfly flapping its wings could eventually lead to a hurricane – or something similar -, consider what might happen if 10,000 highly educated supporters of global warming all flapped their gums and waved their hands at the same time.

Even better, what would be the effects of 7,000,000,000 humans all living, working, running, jumping, eating, and so on? How many hurricanes would that generate? My goodness, what trouble we would all be in!

The point is that any arbitrarily small disturbance to a chaotic system may, and probably will, have an unknown final effect. Maybe good, maybe bad. Water is good if you’re dying of thirst, not so good if you are drowning in it.

The future is unknowable, and agreement that it can be foreseen in relation to weather, and hence climate, is the notion of a fool or a fraud.

Climate is of course a large and dispersive system – and the influence of a butterfly is of course negligible. Merely a metaphor based on the topology of the Lorenz attractor. On the other hand – making dramatic changes to the atmosphere results in changes to biology, chemistry and atmospheric physics with a mathematically finite risk of abrupt and extreme change in any or all of these systems within as little as 10 years. This is of course not skeptical in the least – but mainstream freakin’ climate science.

Arguing that we can’t foresee that these risks exist as a mathematical certainty – even with the impossibility of deciding between which risk will be realized – is an argument from ignorance bordering on insanity.

Much as I loath the facile arguments of the Borg collective cult of AGW groupthink space cadets – skydragon babble is quite easily equally inept.

What would it take to get to an effective and pragmatic global development and environmental policy? A lot more than webby, Joshua, lolwot, gates, jimmy dee and co. have in the tank I would surmise. Equally – obtuse post hoc rationalizations for changing the composition of the atmosphere involving references to popular misrepresentations of science lack any credibility. Why not invoke alternate universes – it would make as much sense.

“Predictability: Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas.” You may care to read the contents of his talk – I won’t quote it. I don’t wish to embarrass you.

I will defer to your knowledge that Lorenz was not serious, and that his work with dynamical systems was deficient. As you say “Climate is of course a large and dispersive system – and the influence of a butterfly is of course negligible. Merely a metaphor based on the topology of the Lorenz attractor.”

I don’t know what Ed Lorenz’s qualifications were, but I find myself in agreement with the content of the talk referenced above. You obviously choose to reject his words as an argument from ignorance bordering on insanity.

Your choice. Facts are facts, opinions are opinions. Your opinions, as firmly and passionately held as they may be, are still only opinions. Quotes from Lorenz, in context, supporting your opinions would be appreciated.

Otherwise, it could be thought that you are making stuff up, and using Lorenz’s name to give your opinions spurious authority.

A hand is five.
Another is five.
What do you get,
add five plus five?
A butterfly.

Lorenz did not presume to answer the question of a butterfly’s wing. It is a metaphor for sensitive dependence – and one that did not even originate with Lorenz.

‘Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil Set off a Tornado in Texas? Lest I appear frivolous in even posing the title question, let alone suggesting that it might have an affirmative answer, let me try to place it in proper perspective by offering two propositions. 1. If a single flap of a butterfly’s wings can be instrumental in generating a tornado, so also can all the previous and subsequent flaps of its wings, as can the flaps of the wings of millions of other butterflies, not to mention the activities of innumerable more powerful creatures, including our own species. 2. If the flap of a butterfly’s wings can be instrumental in generating a tornado, it can equally well be instrumental in preventing a tornado. More generally, I am proposing that over the years minuscule disturbances neither increase nor decrease the frequency of occurrence of various weather events such as tornados; the most that they may do is to modify the sequence in which these events occur. The question which really interests us is whether they can do even this—whether, for example, two particular weather situations differing by as little as the immediate influence of a single butterfly will generally after sufficient time evolve into two situations differing by as much as the presence of a tornado. In more technical language, is the behavior of the atmosphere unstable with respect to perturbations of small amplitude? The connection between this question and our ability to predict the weather is evident. Since we do not know exactly how many butterflies there are, nor where they are all located, let alone which ones are flapping their wings at any instant, we cannot, if the answer to our question is affirmative, accurately predict the occurrence of tornados at a sufficiently distant future time. More significantly, our general failure to detect systems even as large as thunderstorms when they slip between weather stations may impair our ability to predict the general weather pattern even in the near future. How can we determine whether the atmosphere is unstable? The atmosphere is not a controlled laboratory experiment; if we disturb it and then observe what happens, we shall never know what would have happened if we had not disturbed it.’

The answer of course is that a billion butterflies have no possible bearing on a practical understanding of the systems in play. But we shall never know what would have happened if we had not made dramatic changes to the atmosphere of the planet – but we know that these changes can drive extreme responses in biological systems and climate. Surely that is the point of Lorenz? Flynn’s skydragon babble notwithstanding.

I see you have performed the usual Warmist exercise of partially quoting. As I said, I have no wish to embarrass you. If you wish to quote the talk in full, others may judge whether your opinion on what Lorenz meant is valid.

If you had been at Lorenz’s talk, I am sure you would have been able to put him in his place, and told him what he really should have said.

In the meantime, I point out that the Earth is stubbornly refusing to warm. Maybe you can arrange to rectify this apparently deplorable state of affairs.

On the other hand, maybe the weather will continue to change without your guidance. Sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. I’ll trust to Nature. I hope you don’t mind.

So now I need to quote the entire talk? Best if you access it himself yourself – and demonstrates that there is a precise causal connection between a specific butterfly flap and a specific tornado. Else I will be forced to conclude that he is talking through his hat as usual.

The world as I keep saying – is not likely to warm for 20 to 40 years from the 1998/2001 ‘climate shift’. This changes the mathematics of dynamic climate sensitivity not a whit.

‘Abrupt climate changes were especially common when the climate system was being forced to change most rapidly. Thus, greenhouse warming and other human alterations of the earth system may increase the possibility of large, abrupt, and unwelcome regional or global climatic events. The abrupt changes of the past are not fully explained yet, and climate models typically underestimate the size, speed, and extent of those changes. Hence, future abrupt changes cannot be predicted with confidence, and climate surprises are to be expected.’ http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10136&page=1

Showtime’s “Years of Living Dangerously” episode 3 tonight had two themes of interest. One was Sandy and Republicans’ changed attitudes to climate change since the Tea Party takeover, and the other highlighted Kim Cobb of Georgia Tech, looking into the history of El Ninos at Christmas Island. On the Republican issue, ex-Congressman Bob Inglis who stuck with the consensus and lost his position as a result, said something to the effect that when 98 doctors say one thing and 2 say the other, Congress is actively seeking out those 2 for its hearings. They also had Republican Congressman Grimm of NY, whose district was affected by Sandy, but is still a “skeptic” for political reasons. [Grimm is best known now for threatening a TV interviewer on camera, but that wasn’t mentioned]. In the previews for next week, there was a brief shot of Richard Muller pointing to the temperature rise. Could be interesting. I think this series is well done, and presents much to think about, both on climate change and some of the politics around the issues.

Cosmos was interesting last week too. Much was made of how the petrochemical industry resisted saying lead was dangerous, and hired scientists to do that. No parallel drawn to anything else, of course.

The problem with Bob Inglis is that there is no reputable study showing 97 (or 98) out of 100 scientists agreeing with the position. Both the Doran/Zimmerman and Cook studies were horrifically flawed or just outright incompetence.

So anyone using that line is merely a sycophant and has no clue what they are talking about.

The numbers on a roulette wheel with a single zero means that there is better than a 97% chance that either black or red will result from a spin of the wheel. The IPCC assesses this level of confidence as being between virtually certain and extremely likely.

Now we can all rush off to the casino secure in the knowledge that if we bet the family fortune and double up each time, it is extremely likely to virtually certain that we will walk away fabulously wealthy, after having broken the casino bank.

On the other other hand, if the airline you intend to use tells you it is virtually certain – 99% confident – to be able to avoid crashing, you may wish to avoid flying with them. Well, they won’t kill you 99 times out of 100. What could possibly go wrong?

Now you see where the appellation confidence man, or confidence trickster comes from. Things are not always what they seem!

Not at all. I cannot see how you arrive at that conclusion. There is 100% chance ie, certainty of climate change. I am as sure of this as I am sure that the Sun will rise tomorrow – an assumption I know, but I can live with it.

If you think you can stop the climate changing by making each day’s weather identical ,(which you must do to prevent the climate changing), then I wish you luck. You might wish to feed the fairies at the bottom of your garden a different brand of sugar candy.

R Gates – I am fully aware of the Argo floats and have been for many years, however I was looking for actual evidence i.e. some actual analysis. If you are aware of analysis being done then I would appreciate a link.

The only analysis I have seen of the Argo float data is distinctly ambivalent and shows increased “warming” around Australia – quite probably due to the deep La Nina phase we have had for a long time piling up warm water in the Indian Ocean, but significant “cooling” in other regions of the planet. That being mainly surface ocean temperatures.

Let me quote the IPPC 5th report on the Physical science which says “Deeper in the ocean, it is likely that the waters from 700 to 2000 m have warmed on average between 1957 and 2009 and likely that no significant trend was observed between 2000 and 3000 m from 1992 to 2005. It is very likely that the deep (2000 m to bottom) North Atlantic Ocean north of 20°N warmed from 1955 to 1975, and then cooled from 1975 to 2005, with an overall cooling trend. It is likely that most of the water column south of the Sub-Antarctic Front warmed at a rate of about 0.03°C per decade from 1992 to 2005, and waters of Antarctic origin warmed below 3000 m at a global average rate approaching 0.01°C per decade at 4500 m over the same time period. For the deep ocean. Sparse sampling is the largest source of uncertainty below 2000 m depth”.

So in summary;
The surface warmed from 1957 to 2009, but no comment after that time even though later data should be available in 2014.
No trend found from 2000 to 3000m.
North atlantic warmed then cooled with net cooling overall.
Antarctic seems to have warmed at a rate of between 0.01 and 0.03 per decade, which seems to be a pretty brave thing to state given the incredibly small measurement increment and time period.

I should note that the IPPC report on page 264 does a calculation based on what they believe to be the net energy imbalance and conclude that the “missing heat” must have gone into the deep ocean.

I just wanted to know if there was any evidence or whether the 14 were just adhering to a party line. It concerns me that someone who is not prepared to just accept things on a nod is being ostracised.

Any non-mainstream scientist that participates on this new forum is in for a hard time from what I’ve read so far. It looks to me mainly like an IPCC inspired propaganda outlet, with the usual unscientific jumping to cause and effect conclusions. I couldn’t finish reading the article about CO2 being so high that many of us are going to drown, could feel my blood pressure rising.

My advice to Judith: don’t go there, its another mainstream outlet that won’t be changed by banging heads against it.

The thin surface of the ocean is almost completely transparent to solar radiation which is transmitted down into the cooler thermocline.

Do you get the significance?

You can trash all their arguments with this simple fact. If they think they can calculate the surface temperature of the ocean from incident radiation that mostly passes through it, just point out that they forgot to reduce the radiative flux by a factor of over 99%.

I’m baffled by the article on deep ocean heat. If changes to ocean circulation led to reduced heat loss from the Earth over the last 50 years, then could that not explain both the rise in surface and deep ocean heat?

The assumption about the ocean having to lose heat is highly questionable.

“If changes to ocean circulation led to reduced heat loss from the Earth over the last 50 years, then could that not explain both the rise in surface and deep ocean heat?”

If internal variability were responsible for surface warming — e.g. through reducing the rate of cold water upwelling — then it would also cause a larger rate of heat loss, because a warmer surface radiates more power to space. Conversely, an increase in the rate of cold water upwelling would explain an increase in the rate of heat accumulation (as it does for the recent decade) but it would also cause a slowdown in surface warming. So, the explanatory requirements for the changes observed over the last few decades pull in opposite ways.

In order for internal variability to account both for the increase in ocean heat content and the surface warming, one may suppose that the internally generated surface warming promoted a reduction in cloud albedo. This would generate a forcing that mimics the enhanced greenhouse effect and would explain both the surface warming and the increase in ocean heat content. But this would suggests a positive cloud feedback and hence a high climate sensitivity. This means that we would be attributing to internal variability and CO2 together much more than the observed surface warming.

That depends. If SW and LW act the same in regards to heat transport then yes, you could state that climate sensitivity would be increased to both. If heat transport is driven primarily by SW then you could have a situation where climate sensitivity to SW is very high and sensitivity to LW very low.

Steve, you may be on to something but I am unsure what heat transports you are referring to. Either the enhanced greenhouse effect (or aerosols or solar variability) or changes in ocean circulation could cause the surface to cool or warm. Clouds then will respond to changes in surface temperature. Would clouds care what initially caused the surface temperature to change?

Clouds care where the heat is and the energy budget cares where the clouds are. For instance, waves are partly a function of gravity. The water warms up, becomes higher than the surrounding water, and flows downhill. If SW warms the water at the equator and LW doesn’t, or if LW warms it equally then it isn’t causing this movement and is missing an important feedback. One reason the cosmic ray theory is problematic is that it depends on a direct feedback to the production of clouds and you would expect a clear correlation. There is a correlation between solar and clouds but it is in where the clouds are located more than the amount of clouds. This indicates a change in heat transport.

The difficult part isn’t that a change in poleward transport would cause a change in the global energy budget. The difficult part is in identifying the mechanism. Take a look at Rind and Chandler 2012 as I mentioned above. There are also many other model studies that come to the same conclusion. Poleward heat transport reduces the albedo and increases the energy budget.

Having taken a closer look at CCNF, this site is already dead; someone should start making preparations for the funeral. The key issue at the moment, and into the indefinite future, is new observations. What is the new observed data telling us? The last, and only, entry on CCFN was 2 months ago. If that is the best they can do when we need updates on just the “pause” alone, at least twice a month, then there is not much hope that this blog will ever amount to anything.

The outlier label should really refer to those who don’t agree with the body of the IPCC reports and that includes Mann, Trenberth, Emmanuel, Hansen and a host of other activist types who go way beyond what the science actually says and rely seemingly on their gut instinct. Pielke Jnr and our hostess are seen as outliers even when quoting the IPCC. False balance? What a start!

Those who don’t want challenged on the science should stay away. We see these types here too often – they do not further the cause of real science – which demands skepticism.

Fact checking is very welcome but that has to be real facts, not just opinions – even if it is mainstream opinion. Deep ocean warming is not anywhere near a fact – it is an unphysical assertion with almost zero data behind it. And even if true it gives more weight to the disbelievers cause than the believers.

The issue seems to be whether it’s worth participating in this sort of discussion (the CCNF). I would say it definitely is.

It is a fixture of the ideological landscape, which nothing can change in the short term (three years or so), that a number of climate scientists take the view that any disagreement with their own opinions is “misinformation” and “anti-science”. This group of people will loudly denounce any attempt at dialogue because they see it as weakening this solid front against “misinformation”. The more successful any such dialogue looks, the more stridently they will denounce it. Once it becomes accepted that Skeptical opinions are legitimate, and considerable numbers of scientists of varied views are conducting discussions, the dogmatists know that the terms of the public debate will have changed, and they will no longer be able to maintain the facade of “What we think is incontrovertible!” This will put them to the trouble of having to acknowledge that there are different scientific opinions and that they are just one school of thought, and they will have to offer arguments for why they are right and other scientists are wrong, something they evidently hate doing.

But if there is any merit in the Skeptical case, then we can expect just such a dialogue to break out sooner or later, especially if we’re in for a couple of decades of cooling, and if research results keep coming in contrary to the Catastrophist position. So I would say: pursue this for all it’s worth. Ignore the Mann-type dogmatists, or where this is unfeasible, respond to them briefly and politely. And pursue the discussion with those who will listen, whatever their theoretical orientation.

When future historians look back on this period, they will make something of a factor which we hardly talk about: the increasing stresses and strains within the Catastrophist camp. For example, there are the fundamentalists (those who still defend the hockey stick and still deny that there has been a halt in warming) and the broader church. As the situation develops, we can expect the factions of Catastrophists to turn on each other with a fury they have heretofore reserved for the Skeptics. That’s the context for increasing dialogue between Skeptics and the more thoughtful of the Catastrophists.

Good grief! I just went there and read the hit piece on Christy and Spencer. Several there have rightly crticized the author. I tried to add my comments but one has to have a Facebook account to do so. I have philosophical reasons for staying away from that hole, but for employment reasons I am also supposed to not have an account there. So, for purely cathartic reasons I’ll share my thoughts on the article titled “John Christy, Richard McNider and Roy Spencer trying to overturn mainstream science by rewriting history, knowingly spreading falsehoods and re-baselining graphs, by Bart Verheggen” here:

“This is a joke, right? Like how NCDC just ditched the Drd964x dataset for the “new and improved” nClimDiv dataset where they magically determined that those idiots back in the early part of the 20th century didn’t know how to read a thermometer and adjusted those temperatures before 1950 down, again! (I’ve lost count, is this the third or fourth time the early 20th century record has been adjusted down?) Talk about “re-baselining graphs.” Sheesh.”

Rob Bradley,,
There are thousands of Judith Curry equivalents globally. Most are not equivalent vis a vis length of experience, qualification,s, official position, ability to strike fear in opponents of her rational science.
It is not to your credit that you lack the perception, or perhaps that you fear to address, that such people exist as equivalents because they agree with su stantial parts of her science. Some are quite public about their equivalence
A genuine scientist does not accept the notion of settled science (especially when seeking grants to do more); does not withhold data needed for independent replication; does not encourage the censorship of people with opposing views; and so on for a number of traits that are wll publicised
Can I suggest that there is confusion about the importance of two current functions, being original research (and its advancement of knowledge); and the selling of the message. The latter consumes enormous time and effort, but it is the triviall one of the pair. It is often a resort of those who don’t understand the data, but want to be seen on blogs like this.
Here’s a simple guide.
Some strive to deliver the message.
Real scientists deliver the goods.

“pretending that global warming has stopped because the surface temperatures have not grown as fast as before, fully ignoring that the climate system as a whole keeps on warming and that only more of the warming went into the ocean rather than the atmosphere during the last decade.”

Wow, I’m a layman and I know that’s just plain factually WRONG.

Global warming has stopped, the temperature records (Satellites and land based) show it.

There is no indication whatsoever that the warming has suddenly decided as an intelligent entity to dive into the ocean teleporting through the top layers like Dr Spock.
Evidence please, and offer an explanation as to why it would suddenly hide out n the ocean and not warm the top layers.

Raw weather station data comes from the days when all anyone cared about was the weather on the surface. Stations weren’t set up for “climate, well done”; they were at best meant for collecting a blue streak of daily trends. Raw and blue, those are weather, not climate.

As with meat, where there’s an art to knowing when a steer on the grill is well done, there’s an art to knowing when you’ve interpolated the weather station data long enough to get a valid surface trend. With climate, rare is seventeen years of global data. Before that, you don’t have climate information of any sort at all. And for any particular piece of steer, sometimes you get too rare if you just look at time, instead of how well-marinated it is; just so for climate, about one time in twenty even seventeen years isn’t enough. It takes thirty two years to be 99% sure you’ve got a valid climate measure indicating something meaningful, if you’re talking about global weather station data for the surface.

The increase in global temperature interpolated means from surface weather stations is in lock step with CO2E level at the 32 year well done level.

As for why heat would ‘suddenly’ hide out in the oceans, it’s not that sudden, it’s an effect that’s always happened in some measure, at a slower pace, or possibly at a faster pace: we just don’t have good enough measurement of the oceans to say. What we can say is that now, the measurements appear to be saying more heat is going to the oceans than a decade ago. Sure, there are explanations out there in the published science, but if you know what meat is, you know eventually it stops just sizzling and searing, and eventually it cooks; you don’t need a meat thermometer plunged in deep to understand that.

There is a fatal flaw in the GHG argument that Victor fails to acknowledge– that significant warming due to aerosol reduction also occurred 1970-2000 and needs to be subtracted from the approx. 0.5 deg C warming attributed to CO2

Steven, I ignore many comments. Unlike climate dissenters, I am not an expert for every topic. If you want a good answer to your AMO question, write a scientific article about it. Maybe Judith Curry is willing to help, if you can convince her of its value. She works on natural variability.

It appears that you are denying that warming occurs after the pollution from a large volcanic eruption has settled out of the atmosphere, due to increased insolation. (This has been proven many times).

The pollution removed via the Clean Air Acts and other efforts abroad, 1980-2000, amounted to more than 200 Megatons.of aerosols. Are you also denying that warming resulted from the cleaner air?

I would refer you to the pictograph “Observed Tendencies in Surface Solar Radiation”. It shows that efforts to clean the air in the USA and Europe, 1980-2000,. resulted in greater solar radiation (warming) in those areas.
This could only have happened due to cleaner air (Solar irradiance was decreasing at that time)

(Google the title of the pictograph, and select “images” from the toolbar that appears)

Your comment that “it makes no sense” makes no sense,.in view of the facts.

Ignoring what we do not understand, as you put it, is exactly the purpose of Science.

What we do not understand is vast, and grows as Science extends the boundaries of what we do know.

Pretending you’ve trumped Science by pointing to the Void and emoting, “But Uncertainty,” as if you’ve discovered something new or significant is the hallmark of ignorance of how Science works.

Science works by applying inference to what we have observed to find the most parsimonious, simple, universal explanation that fits, until such time as new observations warrant amendment, regarded as accurate or very nearly true.

Throwing a tantrum because you can think of a question that the explanations to date haven’t covered?

Burl Henry, as was explained to you before, the improvements in air quality you mention are only in the USA and Europe. Globally air quality is still getting worse. And if you want to explain the increase of temperature with partial improvements in air quality, you also have to explain why the initial increases in air quality did not lead to a strong cooling. I do not want to redo the previous futile discussion here, the interested reader is can find the old discussion here.

Steven, in that case make your *statement* in the scientific literature. Given that you are so bright, that should be no problem for you, right?

Victor, that is an interesting perspective. You have every right to ignore the things that aren’t understood if I don’t make them understood for you. I feel quite burdened now since I will have to take what is clearly an immature science and make it a mature science all by myself. In the past such things have taken a long time with many people working on them. Could you pass me the data on poleward heat transport for the last 100 years? I’d like to start there.

Victor, if you confused my commenting to Bart that I was invited to the Naval Academy with some claim of extraordinary intellect my apologies for the confusion. That was just my way of telling Bart not to start throwing his BS in my direction. Note that I said and so did most my class, ie a field trip.

I do not understand your comment “you also have to explain why the initial increase in air quality did not lead to a strong cooling”
Surely, you jest!

Any increase in air quality will naturlly increase warming, due to greater insolation, and not cause cooling. (There is no warming from atmospheric pollution–otherwise a volcanic eruption would cause warming, rather than the observed cooling)

In the following, please understand that I am referring only to the 1970-2000 time-frame, when the approx. 0.5 deg C of warming attributed to CO2 occurred.

Two things were happening then, with respect to the atmosphere

1. CO2 levels were slowly rising

2. Hundreds of Megatons of aerosols were being removed from the atmosphere because of the Clean Air Acts et al,

The reference which I had directed you to earlier, “Observed Tendencies in Surface Solar Radiation” clearly shows an increasing amount of solar radiation (warming) as a result of the cleaner air. (Althogh “local”, it would have been averaged in with the rest of the world’s temperatures.to arrive at the 0.5 deg C temp. rise)

This warming must be subtracted from the 0.5 deg C of warming currently attributed to CO2 to arrive at a scientifically correct amount of greenhouse gas warming that may have occurred.

I should have written: you also have to explain why the initial decreases in air quality did not lead to a strong cooling. If you think that the clear air act caused 0.5°C warming, the increases in pollution before the clear air act should have caused 0.5°C of cooling. You cannot ignore the period before 1970 if you want to present a credible mechanism.

And to explain *global* warming you need global information on the air quality. *Globally* the air quality is unfortunately not getting better.

Again, I would refer you to the “Observed Tendencies in Surface Solar Radiation” image.

The period prior to the Clean Air Acts shows decreasing amounts of incident solar radiation, due to air pollution build-up and, hence, cooling.due to reduced insolation.. Removal of at least a portion of this pollution allowed temperatures to rise, as it happened, approx. 0.5 deg C.

The image further shows increasing amounts of incident solar radiation, 2000-present, in the West, and decreasing amounts in the East Over the past 16 years, or so, the resultant “local” temperatures, when averaged together, has resulted in the apparent “pause”.

Once the East begins to clean up its air, average temperatures can be expected to begin rising again–unllesss current temperatures represent a plateau..